This short paper presents an educational approach to teaching three popular methods for encoding DNA sequences: one-hot encoding, binary encoding, and integer encoding. Aimed at bioinformatics and computational biology students, our learning intervention focuses on developing practical skills in implementing these essential techniques for…

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…

Several instructional approaches have been advanced for learning programming. However, effective ways of engaging beginners in programming in K-12 are still unclear, especially among low socioeconomic status learners in technology-deprived learning environments. Understanding the learning path of novice programmers will bridge this gap and explain…

The integration of visual programming in early formal education has been found to promote computational thinking of students. Teachers' intuitive perspectives about optimal learning processes -- "folk psychology" -- impact their perspectives about teaching "folk pedagogy" and play a significant role in integrating educational…

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…

Teaching robotics with the robot operating system (ROS) is valuable for instating good programming practices but requires significant setup steps from the learner. Providing a ready-made ROS learning environment over the web can make robotics more accessible; however, most of the previous remote labs have abstracted the authentic ROS developer…

In this paper we develop a case for introducing a new teaching tool to undergraduate mathematics. Lean is an interactive theorem prover that instantly checks the correctness of every step and provides immediate feedback. Teaching with Lean might present a challenge, in that students must write their proofs in a formal way using a specific syntax.…

Today computing is intricate in all aspects of our lives, beginning with communications and education to banking, information security, health, shopping, and social media. Development of the computing is proportional to the development of software which is becoming a serious part of all daily lives. This paper, therefore, assessed the impact of…

This article presents a novel approach to introducing principal component analysis (PCA), using summary tables and descriptive statistics. Given its applicability across a variety of academic disciplines, this topic offers abundant opportunity for class discussion and activities. However, teaching PCA in an introductory class can be challenging…

Knowledge components (KCs) have many applications. In computing education, knowing the demonstration of specific KCs has been challenging. This paper introduces an entirely data-driven approach for: (1) discovering KCs; and (2) demonstrating KCs, using students' actual code submissions. Our system is based on two expected properties of KCs: (1)…

Serious games or educational games have attracted the interest of instructors and researchers for several years. In the field of education, serious games are being used for motivating students, attracting their interest in cognitively demanding fields and making the teaching and learning process more fun. Moreover, learning through implementing…

Computer Programming is believed to have effect on creativity, reasoning, analytic and mathematical skills. This cognitive development is at a cost from both ends of students and teachers of computer programming. Its abstractive nature makes it difficult to teach and learn hence, the enormous hours spent in teaching, learning and developing…

Biology is a data-driven discipline facilitated greatly by computer programming skills. This article describes an introductory experiential programming activity that can be integrated into distance learning environments. Students are asked to develop their own Python programs to identify the nature of alleles linked to disease. This activity…

This systematic literature review examines the use of computer games as instructional aids in the teaching and learning of programming. With the ubiquitous nature of technology permeating various aspects of modern life, the integration of gaming devices into educational settings has garnered increased attention. This paper investigates whether…

Computational thinking (CT) is becoming increasingly important as a learning content. Subject-integrated approaches aim to develop CT within other subjects like mathematics. The question is how exactly CT can be integrated and learned in mathematics classrooms. In a case study involving 12 sixth-grade learners, CT activities were explored that…