Despite the increasing use of the statistical programming language R in statistics and data analysis (SDA), its implementation in communication science education is limited. Experiences, recommendations, and a critical exchange are therefore scarce. The following contribution addresses this very gap. At the Department of Journalism and…

In psychology departments in South Africa, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) is routinely used for quantitative analysis. While SPSS has a user-friendly interface, it does not permit application of some of the more sophisticated analytic approaches and therefore has limited functionality. The programming language R can perform…

This paper describes a study of teaching a programming language in a C programming course by having students assemble and program a low-cost mobile robot. Writing their own programs to define the robot's behavior raised students' motivation. Working in small groups, students programmed the robots by using the control structures of structured…

This study was conducted to examine the effect of in-service training of computer science teachers in Scratch language using an electronic learning platform on acquiring programming skills and attitudes towards teaching programming. The sample of this study consisted of 40 middle school computer science teachers. They were assigned into two…

This article presents a study aimed at examining the novice student answers in an introductory programming final e-exam to identify misconceptions and types of errors. Our study used the Delphi concept inventory to identify student misconceptions and skill, rule, and knowledge-based errors approach to identify the types of errors made by novices…

High-level thinking and problem solving skill is one requirement of computer programming that most of the students experience problems with. Individual differences such as motivation, attitude towards programming, thinking style of the student, and complexity of the programming language have influence on students' success on programming. Thus,…

This paper describes a virtual system that emulates an ARM-based processor machine, created to replace a traditional hardware-based system for teaching assembly language. The virtual system proposed here integrates, in a single environment, all the development tools necessary to deliver introductory or advanced courses on modern assembly language…

Various methods and tools have been proposed to overcome the learning obstacles for Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). However, it remains difficult especially for novice learners. The problem may be not only adopting an instructional method, but also an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Learners employ IDEs as a means to solve programming…

Learning to program is a complex task, and the impact of different pedagogical approaches to teach this skill has been hard to measure. This study examined the performance data of seven cohorts of students (N = 1168) learning programming under three different pedagogical approaches. These pedagogical approaches varied either in the length of the…

This paper investigates the impact of combining self explaining (SE) with computer architecture diagrams to help novice students learn assembly language programming. Pre- and post-test scores for the experimental and control groups were compared and subjected to covariance (ANCOVA) statistical analysis. Results indicate that the SE-plus-diagram…

In this paper, an interactive teaching approach to introduce the concept of sampling distributions using the statistical software program, R, is shown. One advantage of this approach is that the program R is freely available via the internet. Instructors can easily demonstrate concepts in class, outfit entire computer labs, and/or assign the…

EXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a non-proprietary, computer language that has many uses. Known primarily as the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for business reporting, XBRL allows entities to report their business information (i.e., financial statements, announcements, etc.) on the Internet and communicate with other entities'…