Background: Coding has become an integral part of STEM education. However, novice learners face difficulties in processing codes within embedded structures (also termed nested structures). This study aimed to investigate the cognitive mechanism underlying the processing of embedded coding structures based on hierarchical complexity theory, which…

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…

Resilience is a critical personality trait that allows one to deal with difficulties, learn from failures, and maintain a positive attitude during task performance. However, it has not been understudied in a complex and challenging educational domain. The current research intends to address this gap by analyzing the specific characteristics of…

In recent years, flipped classroom has become a popular teaching method. Compared with the traditional teaching method, the flipped classroom gives learners and teachers more opportunities to discuss. However, the flipped classroom has also encountered some difficulties. If we do not consider the different learning conditions of each learner when…

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…

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…

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…

Novice programmers need well-designed instruction and assessment informed by research and critical perspectives to conquer the historical challenges associated with completing introductory computer programming courses successfully. These issues include high dropout and failure rates, the struggle to acquire and retain basic programming knowledge,…

As computational thinking becomes increasingly essential, the challenge of designing effective teaching approaches to foster students' abilities in this area persists, especially for higher order thinking skills. This study addresses this challenge by proposing and implementing a peer assessment-based Scrum project (PA-SP) learning approach in…

This study examined the effects of virtual and physical robots (VPR) using in different learning stages (simple session/complex session) in a robotics programming course. A quasi-experimental design was implemented with 84 junior high school students from two classes. One class with 44 students used combination of VPR strategy for learning,…

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…

Serious games are considered an effective method to engage students in programming education and have been increasingly used in classrooms. An important part of the learning process with serious games involves the presentation of the new concepts and the provided support to encounter student difficulties. Although the most common approach is the…

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…

A well-run introductory CS1 course is essential for all students within CS education. CS1 is necessary to keep students in the major and important to attract non-majors to the CS field. Unfortunately, there are many well-known issues that most CS1 courses have in common: high drop rates, low retention, high student stress, student struggle,…