This mixed-method study at six universities asked degree apprentices about their trajectories into the apprenticeship, to better understand the social mobility potential of apprenticeships. The degree apprenticeship offers a route to a degree for apprentices, who are employees studying for a degree. As a new model, little is known about the…

Serious games, or else educational games, for programming are considered to have a positive impact on learning programming. Specifically, serious games are considered to motivate students and engage them in playing and learning programming. However, more research is required in order to study their effects in learning programming, as well as their…

Teaching introductory computer programming and choosing the proper tools and programming languages are challenging tasks. Most of the existing tools are not fully integrated into systems to support the teaching-learning processes. The present paper describes the usability evaluation of the Virtual Programming Lab module for Moodle (VPL-Moodle)…

With the removal of the barriers of time and distance, E-learning platforms have attracted millions of learners, but these platforms are experiencing a significant drop-out ratio. One of the primary reasons for this problem is the lack of motivation among the learners because of the similar learning experience provided to them despite their…

This paper reports on a design-based study within the context of a 3-day "digital making" (DM) summer camp attended by a group of students (aged 11-13) in grades 5 and 6. During the camp, students were presented with a set of mathematical problems to solve in a block-based programming environment, which was connected to various physical…

In the school year 2020-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed distance learning (in Italian, the DAD acronym is used). Therefore, the Degree Course in Primary Education Sciences of the University of Perugia has proposed an innovative programme for the training of future teachers by developing a distance learning laboratory focusing coding and…

Problems associated with time-cost trade-offs in project networks, which are commonly referred to as crashing problems, date back nearly 60 years. Many prominent management science textbooks provide a traditional linear programming (LP) formulation for a classic project crashing problem, in which the time-cost trade-off for each activity is…

The assessment of program functionality can generally be accomplished with straight-forward unit tests. However, assessing the design quality of a program is a much more difficult and nuanced problem. Design quality is an important consideration since it affects the readability and maintainability of programs. Assessing design quality and giving…

Video tutorials substantially support demonstration-based training where the main goal is to enhance procedural knowledge by observing various understandable examples of performing a task. Although video tutorials are broadly popular nowadays, little attention is given to the design features of an instructional tutorial. The aim of this study is…

The field of computer science has long been plagued by issues of diversity - in particular, attracting and retaining those historically marginalized in computing contexts. This is a great loss to the field, to the future of innovation, and to society. Perhaps most importantly, it is an incalculable loss to those populations excluded from pursuing…

Computer science impacts our lives every day in a multitude of ways. Despite its ubiquity and power to shape the world, the computer science education community continues to struggle with issues of equity. Problems of access, opportunity, influence and achievement are pervasive and while a handful of scholars have investigated specific approaches…

Contribution: The design of an operating system (OS) experiment course with a gentle learning curve is proposed and a scalable OS experiment platform supporting learning behavior analysis is presented. Background: In the teaching practice of the OS experiment course, several problems were faced. First, the learning curve for the students is too…

Contribution: This article compares the predictive performance of the scores on WeBWorK homework (online) with those of standard handwritten homework. The comparison is done across six undergraduate electrical engineering classes where each of the nine instructors have used both homework modalities. Background: Online homework systems have been…

Traditional active learning classrooms can support student collaboration and increase student engagement, but they are costly (Park & Choi, 2014). This study examined students' perceptions of a traditional active learning classroom ($250,000 approximate cost) and a low-cost active learning classroom ($10,000 approximate cost) in an…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the quality design criteria for developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Currently, there are limited studies that highlight the required design criteria for the MOOC programming courses. A descriptive analysis was conducted to examine the characteristics of the three important quality design…