Background and Context: To educate students about programming plagiarism and collusion, we introduced an approach that automatically reports how similar a submitted program is to others. However, as most students receive similar feedback, those who engage in plagiarism and collusion might feel inadequately warned. Objective: When students are…

Background and Context: Self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are critical aspect of learning to program and are predictive of academic success. Early college students often struggle to use these skills, but can improve when given targeted instruction. However, it is not yet clear what skills are best to prioritize. Objective: We seek to create a…

Background and Context: Efforts to engage adult learners in computer science in the United States have been largely unsuccessful. While research examining the use of music for teaching computer programming with K-12 learners is emerging, little research with adult learners exists. Objective: This study evaluates the effect of computer coding…

Background and Context: Productive failure (PF) is a learning paradigm that flips the order of instruction: students work on a problem, then receive a lesson. PF increases learning, but less is known about student emotions and collaboration during PF, particularly in a computer science context. Objective: To provide insight on students' emotions…

Background and Context: Peer code review activities provide well-documented benefits to students in programming courses. Students develop relevant skills through exposure to alternative coding solutions, producing and receiving feedback, and collaboration with peers. Despite these benefits, low student motivation has been identified as one of the…

Background and Context: Learning to create self-directed and personally authentic programming projects involves encountering challenges and learning to get unstuck. Objective: This article investigates how one U.S. fourth-grade classroom engaged in practices which emphasized community supports, in the context of the classroom's implementation and…

Background and Context: Encouraging undergraduate programming students to think more about their software development processes is challenging. Most programming courses focus on coding skill development and mastering programming language features; subsequently software development processes (e.g. planning, code commenting, and error debugging) are…

Background and Context: Various coding initiatives and materials exist such as those on Code.org site to promote students' computational thinking (CT). However, little is known as to: (a) whether such materials, in fact, promote CT and (b) how CT skills are related to each other. Objective: As a preliminary step to identify CT skills addressed in…

Background and Context: automated feedback for programming assignments has great potential in promoting just-in-time learning, but there has been little work investigating the design of feedback in this context. Objective: to investigate the impacts of different designs of automated feedback on student learning at a fine-grained level, and how…

Background and Context: Researchers and practitioners have begun to incorporate collaboration in programming because of its reported instructional and professional benefits. However, younger students need guidance on how to collaborate in environments that require substantial interpersonal interaction and negotiation. Previous research indicates…

Background and Context: Subgoal labeled worked examples have been extensively researched, but the research has been reported piecemeal. This paper aggregates data from three studies, including data previously unreported, to holistically examine the effect of subgoal labeled worked examples across three student populations and across different…

This review synthesizes literature on computing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Shulman introduced PCK in the 1980s to describe the amalgam of knowledge teachers draw upon in their work and use of the construct is increasing in the computing education community. From a systematic search of the literature, I identified 19 articles drawn from 9…

Background and Context: Current introductory instruction fails to identify, structure, and sequence the many skills involved in programming. Objective: We proposed a theory which identifies four distinct skills that novices learn incrementally. These skills are tracing, writing syntax, comprehending templates (reusable abstractions of programming…

Background and Context: Computational thinking (CT) is considered as a valuable literacy for all students, and its inclusion in compulsory schooling could increase the numbers of underrepresented students who pursue computing-related careers. Computer Science Unplugged (CSU) had success in making computer science (CS) accessible to K-12 students…

Background and Context: Learners struggle with conceptual understanding of introductory programming concepts such as variables, expressions, and loops. Objective: We examine whether and how designed activities for conceptual exploration support preliminary engagement with and learning of foundational and often hard-to-grasp programming concepts…