Background and Context: Multiple studies report that experienced instructors lack consensus on the difficulty of programming tasks for novices. However, adequately gauging task difficulty is needed for alignment: to select and structure tasks in order to assess what students can and cannot do. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine…

A national curriculum for the study of computing became compulsory in English secondary schools in September 2014, replacing the study of information and communications technology with computer science (CS). This posed difficulties for teachers and students who did not have knowledge or experience of programming. This study was designed to…

Aim/Purpose: The need for this paper arises from the lack of comprehensive studies comparing the impact of cloud-based versus local database systems on student learning outcomes. Specifically, there is a need to understand how these different approaches affect usability and cognitive load in educational settings, which are critical factors for…

Flipped classroom is one of the important teaching modes among many novel teaching methods in recent years, students watch the video in the pre-class. However, if students cannot focus on the pre-class video learning or have problems with the learning content, the learning effect will be less than expected. Therefore, this research proposes a…

Computational thinking (CT) has gained considerable attention and in-depth discussion over the last two decades. Although the significance of CT has been highlighted, it could be challenging for educators to teach CT. Fortunately, adopting robots in education has been evidenced to be of benefit to promoting students' learning motivation, CT, and…

Quantum information science and engineering (QISE) is a rapidly developing field that leverages the skills of experts from many disciplines to utilize the potential of quantum systems in a variety of applications. It requires talent from a wide variety of traditional fields, including physics, engineering, chemistry, and computer science, to name…

Programming is becoming increasingly common in mathematics degrees as it is a desirable skill for new graduates. However, research shows that its use is mostly restricted to computational or modelling tasks. This paper reports a study on students' perceptions of and difficulties with Lean, an interactive theorem prover introduced as part of a…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for programming learning based on information tutoring feedback (ITF) to provide real-time guidance and feedback to self-directed learners during programming problem-solving and to improve learners' computational thinking. Design/methodology/approach: By…

Concurrency is a complex to learn topic that is becoming more and more relevant, such that many undergraduate Computer Science curricula are introducing it in introductory programming courses. This paper investigates the combined use of Sonic Pi and Team-Based Learning to mitigate the difficulties in early exposure to concurrency. Sonic Pi, a…

This paper describes a pilot study that explores students learning how to program via a multi-disciplinary approach. The study participants were eleven 6th grade students who learned programming fundamentals via music activities in a Scratch 3.0 environment. These activities included the programming of familiar melodies and the development of…

"Motivation": Enrollments in Brazilian computing degrees are at an all-time high, but graduation numbers have not increased at the same rate. Moreover, enrollment growth has mainly attracted male students, steadily expanding the gender gap in Brazilian computing programs. Such high attrition rates have a great economic impact and may…

Block-based programming languages (BBLs) have been proposed as a way to prepare students for learning to program in more sophisticated, text-based languages, such as Java. Hybrid BBLs add the ability to view and edit the block commands in auto-generated, text-based code. We compared the use of a non-hybrid BBL (Scratch), a hybrid BBL (Pencil…

The recent push to introduce coding in early childhood education has been the subject of heated debate. A lack of theoretical and empirical research devoted to understanding coding education acceptance provided the motivation for this article. As a way to engage in the debate, this article investigated kindergarten teachers' acceptance of coding…

Background: The motivational climate within a course has been shown to be an important predictor of students' engagement and course ratings. Because little is known about how students' perceptions of the motivational climate in a computer science (CS) course vary by sex, race/ethnicity, and academic major, we investigated these questions: (1) To…

Our aim in this paper is to improve the efficiency of a learning process by using learners' traces to detect particular needs. The analysis of the semantic path of a learner or group of learners during the learning process can allow detecting those students who are in needs of help as well as identify the insufficiently mastered concepts. We…