This paper describes the development of a training module to improve students' individual online behaviors. We developed this module to integrate cyber hygiene concepts into a hands-on learning activity where students develop and secure a mobile web application using the Salesforce Developer tool. This new module aims to prepare the next…

Various similarity measures for source code have been proposed, many rely on edit- or tree-distance. To support a lecturer in quickly assessing live or online exercises with respect to "approaches taken by the students," we compare source code on a more abstract, semantic level. Even if novice student's solutions follow the same idea,…

Learning to write programs is hard, but many fail to even learn basic program reading skills, such as mentally tracing a program to predict its behavior. This dissertation argues a new theory of programming language knowledge that includes mappings from syntax to semantics and their nested combinations can serve as the basis for more granular…

Control systems are becoming ever more commonly used in everyday life. This is true both in industry and in the domestic domain, in the form of e.g., smart home systems. The quality of such systems can be increased by using formal verification methods, such as the model checking technique, to make sure that the designed system fulfills all user…

This paper systematically explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) generate explanations of code examples of the type used in intro-to-programming courses. As we show, the nature of code explanations generated by LLMs varies considerably based on the wording of the prompt, the target code examples being explained, the programming language, the…

Purpose: This study investigates the impact of AI-assisted pair programming on undergraduate students' intrinsic motivation, programming anxiety, and performance, relative to both human-human pair programming and individual programming approaches. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was conducted over two academic years (2023-2024) with 234…

Introduction: Computer Science Education does not have a universally defined set of concepts consistently covered in all introductory courses (CS1). One approach to understanding the concepts covered in CS1 is to ask educators. In 2004, Nell Dale did just this. She also collected their perceptions on challenging topics to teach. Dale mused how the…

Background: With the development of computational literacy, there has been a surge in both research and practice application of text-based and block-based modalities within the field of computer programming education. Despite this trend, little work has actually examined how learners engaging in programming process when utilizing these two major…

In education, we have noticed a significant gap between the ability of students to program in an educational visual programming environment and the ability to write code in a professional programming environment. The aim of our research was to verify the methodology of transition from visual programming of mobile applications in MIT App Inventor 2…

The purposes of the current study were to examine the effectiveness of the multimedia computer-based lessons on programming with Scratch in Technology integrated with the TGT cooperative learning technique based on the 80/80 efficiency criterion, to compare the learning achievement of Grade 7 students between those taught using multimedia…

The impact of cognitive biases, particularly biased self-assessment, on learning outcomes and decision-making in higher education is of great significance. This study delves into the confluence of cognitive biases and user experience in spreadsheet programming as a crucial IT skill across various academic disciplines. Through a quantitative…

Providing appropriate feedback is important when learning to program. However, it is still unclear how different feedback strategies affect learning outcomes in programming. This study designed four different two-step programming feedback strategies and explored their impact on novice programmers' academic achievement, learning motivations, and…

This study explores the effects of worked-out examples and metacognitive scaffolding on novice learners' knowledge performance, cognitive loads, and self-regulation skills in problem-solving programming. 126 undergraduate students in a computer programming fundamentals course were randomly assigned to one of four groups: (1) task performance with…

Programming is an interdisciplinary practice with applications in both mathematics and computer science. Mathematics concerns rigor, abstraction, and generalization. Computer science predominantly concerns efficiency, concreteness, and physicality. This makes programming a medium for problem solving that mediates between mathematics and computer…

Teaching software engineering (SWE) as a core computer science course (ACM, 2013) is a challenging task. The challenge lies in the emphasis on what a large-scale software means, implementing teamwork, and teaching abstraction in software design while simultaneously engaging students into reasonable coding tasks. The abstraction of the system…