In this essay, Mingda Sun, a high school student from Connecticut, recounts her summer research internship opportunity at the Center for Quantitative Medicine of UConn Health. She discusses her learning experiences, the challenges she faced, and the encouragement she received from her mentors and peers and explains how this month-long internship…

This paper is to investigate into the effect of design-based learning (DBL) activities and programing training on computational thinking (CT) skills. In total, 119 from the ninth grade students were recruited for this study conducted within the scope of Computer Science course. A semi-experimental research design was adopted, and DBL activities…

Learning to program requires perseverance, practice, and the mindset that programming skills are improved through these activities (i.e., that everyone has the potential to become good at programming). In contrast to an entity mindset, individuals with an incremental mindset believe that ability is malleable and can be improved with effort. Prior…

This action research study explored how women perceived the influences of collaborative software development methodologies on workplace culture at one financial technology firm. While collaborative software development methodologies were not designed to increase gender diversity, the transformational shifts in the way technology teams work…

Stereotypes people hold about computer scientists contribute to underrepresentation in computer science. Perceptions of computer scientists have historically been linked to males and a "nerd" culture, which can lead to lack of interest, particularly for girls. This article presents two studies conducted with two groups of middle…

Beyond cognitive competence, other abilities are relevant to labor market nowadays, including critical thinking, self confidence, teamwork and communication. It is then important to introduce in the learning process practices that contribute to both the acquirement of knowledge and the development of soft skills. A prominent answer to this…

To investigate the impact of the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) on the development of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework for Vocational High School teachers in the Digital Era 4.0, this research will look at the integration of ICT. The evaluation of the Online Learning Implementation…

Background: Instructors and students are on a continuing quest to identify predictors of learning. Objective: This study examines the associations between self-reported exam score and study techniques among students in two courses, Introductory Psychology and Computer Science. Method: We used an online survey to measure the extent students (N =…

The climate for minoritized groups in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is exclusionary and hinders their capacity to thrive and earn degrees in STEM disciplines. Most research on and support for programs to diversify technology and STEM fields have focused on strategies in highly selective, well-resourced institutions, which…

Background: Group size is one of the important factors that affect collaborative learning, however, there is no consensus in the literature on how many students should the groups be composed of during the problem-solving process. Objectives: This study investigated the effect of group size in a K-12 introductory Artificial Intelligence course by…

In this paper, I discuss undergraduate students' engagement in basic Python programming while solving combinatorial problems. Students solved tasks that were designed to involve programming, and they were encouraged to engage in activities of prediction and reflection. I provide data from two paired teaching experiments, and I outline how the task…

In this research study, we performed a "content analysis" of selected introductory programming textbooks for three languages to examine which software development concepts are emphasized in these books. Our goal was to determine which concepts are considered to be most representative of software development based on the topics emphasized…

In this study, we gauge the perceptions of novice computer programmers about Second Life (SL) as a digital learning environment for concept understanding in computer programming. SL is chosen as the learning environment because it offers, within a constructivist frame, the use of learner-centered pedagogies for designing curriculum. We adopt a…

An increasing number of countries have recently included programming education in their curricula. Similarly, utilizing programming concepts in gameplay has become popular in the videogame industry. Although many games have been developed for learning to program, their variety and their correspondence to national curricula remain an uncharted…

SQL query writing is a challenging task for novices, even after considerable training. Query writing is a programming task and a translation task where the writer must translate a user's request for information into code that conforms to the structure, constraints, and syntax of an SQL SELECT statement and that references specific tables and…