Teaching programming concepts to enhance students' problem solving and computational thinking skills is a challenging task, especially when students enter college with little to no preparation, or they lack the interest or capacity for programming. Online platforms that serve as automated practice and assessment systems have been offered as…

This study aims to compare the social presence and motivation of students taking a database II course using either the virtual world Second Life (SL) or the Enocta learning management system (LMS)/Adobe Connect. The study group consisted of 60 undergraduate sophomore students enrolled in a fully online computer programming program. Students were…

An ongoing challenge of 21st century learning is ensuring everyone has the requisite skills to participate in a digital, knowledge-based economy. Once an anathema to parents and teachers, digital games are increasingly at the forefront of conversations about ways to address student engagement and provoke challenges to media pedagogies. While…

Pair programming (PP) is a useful approach to fostering computational thinking for young students. However, there are many factors impacting on the effectiveness of PP. The period of switching roles between the driver and the navigator is often ignored by researchers. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the impact of the switching period on PP.…

While some research has suggested that video lectures are just as effective as in-person lectures to convey basic information to students, not everyone agrees that the flipped classroom model is an effective way of educating students. This research explores traditional, semi-flipped and fully-flipped classroom models by comparing three sections of…

The purpose of the present research is to designate the effects of Scratch-based game activities on students' attitudes towards learning computer programming, self-efficacy beliefs and levels of academic achievement. The research was conducted through a pre-test-post-test control group quasi-experimental study. The study group consists of 49…

Program visualization (PV) is one of the approaches to assist novices in introductory programming courses. We investigated the effect of a newly developed PV tool to teach tracing to first-year programming students at a South-African university. The tool takes the form of an interactive computer-based tutorial that teaches students how to draw…

The flipped classroom model of teaching can be an ideal venue for turning a traditional classroom into an engaging, inquiry-based learning (IBL) environment. In this paper, we discuss how two instructors at different universities made their classrooms come to life by moving the acquisition of basic course concepts outside the classroom and using…

This study examines the background of introductory programming concepts and the use of video as an instructional tool. Thirty-five students in an introductory C# class were administered a survey to report data on demographics, usage on video, and opinions about the video. Students were in online and face to face sections of the class. Data were…

Integrated curricula and experiential learning are the main ingredients to the recipe to improve student learning in higher education. In the academic computer science world it is mostly assumed that this experiential learning takes place at a business as an internship experience. The intent of this paper is to schism the traditional understanding…

In this paper, we present two studies examining how high school students learn to program in a mobile, social programming environment that we have developed and deployed ("IPRO"). IPRO is delivered, with an associated curriculum, as an iPod Touch app and is freely and publicly available. We find that the affordances of mobility and…

The challenge of teaching programming in higher education is complicated by problems associated with large class teaching, a prevalent situation in many developing countries. This paper reports on an investigation into the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning of programming in a class of more than 200 students. A course and…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…