Describes a study that explored the parameter-related misconceptions of two college students in an introductory programming course. Explains how they were able to construct correctly functioning modular programs by making adjustments to formal parameter lists; discusses results within a constructivist framework; and suggests implications for…

As algorithms have been seen to be hard to teach and learn, teachers have tried to look for help in algorithm animation. While the effect of algorithm animation on learning has been studied, but not reliably evidenced, this study tries to approach the problem from a different perspective. Sixty hours of assignment sessions in an introductory…

Becoming a quality software developer requires practice under the guidance of an expert mentor. Unfortunately, in most academic environments, there are not enough experts to provide any significant design mentoring for software engineering students. To address this problem, we present a collaborative software design tool intended to maximize an…

A study analyzing survey results of more than 850 students enrolled in college computer courses was conducted. The survey included, among other things, questions about students' preferences for a programming assignment. The three choices given were examples of common types of programming assignments found in CS1 textbooks: an application to…

In the current teaching activities on curriculum, teachers taught all kinds of computer language at the most of the time. Students also focus on a variety of examinations, but the real time to train students' independent software developing skill is very limited. This has resulted in the students only to copy other people's systems design ideas,…

Ten years after the groundbreaking "From Barbie to Mortal Kombat" highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in "World of…

This article presents a project-based case study that was developed for students with diverse backgrounds and varied inclinations for engaging technical topics. The project, called History Places, requires that student teams develop a vision for a kind of digital library, propose a conceptual model, and use the model to derive a logical model and…

Three different approaches to teaching introductory programming are reviewed: the incremental approach, the sub-language approach, and the mini-language approach. The paper analyzes all three approaches, providing a brief history of each and describing an example of a programming environment supporting this approach. In the incremental approach,…

Proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing students' knowledge of programming. The idea is to integrate three types of programming knowledge from educational computing literature with three forms of knowledge from cognitive psychology literature. A study is described that determined types of knowledge required to answer exam questions, and…

Describes Chomp, an educational strategy game for use in high school programming courses that can encourage cooperative learning. Discusses rules of the game; Chomp players; Chomp board programs; Chomp tournaments; Chomp strategies; and extensions of the activity that can involve more advanced mathematics. (LRW)

Discusses computational tools for learning programming and describes a system that was developed to help university students acquire the capability to model computational problems independently of a specific programming language. User-system interaction is explained; and system architecture is described, including specification acquisition, a…

Discussion of tutorial interactions in intelligent tutoring systems focuses on an empirical study of university students that identified five considerations human tutors take into account when they plan tutorial interventions to correct student bugs, or errors, in computer programming. Tutorial goals and strategies are described, and future…

Unlike most program assessment systems, Program Assessment using Specified Solutions (PASS), evaluates student C programs by assessing the way a problem was solved by performing a comparison of the submitted program with a solution plan. This article describes PASS, its use of instructor specified solution plans, assessment and feedback systems,…

Structural learning aids, such as interactive overviews (IOs), have previously been shown to facilitate text comprehension and recall. In this study, we examined the effects of structural aids on learners' structural knowledge and their performance on a procedural transfer task. In Experiment 1, 90 college students were presented definitions of…

Business intelligence derived from data warehousing and data mining has become one of the most strategic management tools today, providing organizations with long-term competitive advantages. Business school curriculums and popular database textbooks cover data warehousing, but the examples and problem sets typically are small and unrealistic. The…