Describes how World Wide Web delivered visual explanations of programming constructs have been used to supplement conventional instructional methods and materials traditionally employed introductory programming courses. Explanations are constructed using inexpensive commercial software that supports the use of animation, graphics, color, and…

Examines male and female high school students' attitudes toward computers in relation to gender and computer experience. Findings revealed: males showed a more positive attitude toward computers even when computer experience was controlled; females were less interested in computer science (CS) than males, however no gender differences were found…

Discussion of changes in scholarly communication due to the World Wide Web focuses on a comparison of two views of information production and use in computer-related research based on citation analysis of publications on the Web using autonomous citation indexing and a parallel citation analysis of traditional journal literature. (Author/LRW)

Describes the first online undergraduate certificate program in programming which was created specifically for the deaf and hard-of-hearing at Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT's) National Technical Institute for the Deaf College. Explains modifications to videotaped lectures as well as possible future plans. (LRW)

Reports results of a study analyzing link density of 200 highly cited documents appearing in ResearchIndex, an autonomous citation index of literature published on the Web. Analysis focuses on the relationship between citations and hypertext links at the publicly available document level. No significant relationship between Web-based citation…

Santa Clara University's Robotic Systems Laboratory conducts an aggressive robotic development and operations program in which interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate students build and deploy a wide range of robotic systems, ranging from underwater vehicles to spacecraft. These year-long projects expose students to the breadth of and…

The primary purpose of this study was to analyze different perceptions displayed by novice programmers in the C++ programming language, and determine if modularization ability could be improved by an instructional treatment that concentrated on solving computer programs from previously existing modules. This study attempted to answer the following…

The purpose of this study was to develop scales to assess instrumental help seeking, executive help seeking, perceived benefits of help seeking, and avoidance of help seeking and to examine their psychometric properties by conducting factor and reliability analyses. As this is the first attempt to examine the latent structures underlying the…

In this article, the author discusses the relation of technology, science, self-concept, interest, and gender. For nearly 20 years the topic of "women and technology" has played an important role in discussions about gender equality in Germany. The very first project for promoting females started in 1978 under the title "Women in…

The computer science high-school teaching community of practice possesses a rich collection of distributed practical knowledge consisting of individual teachers' expertise regarding pedagogy. However, without a proper means of communication and rules of discourse, the individual pieces of knowledge might not be transferred properly within the…

Roles can be assigned to occurrences of variables in programs according to a small number of stereotypical patterns of use. Studies on explicitly teaching roles to novices learning programming have shown that roles are an excellent pedagogical tool for clarifying the structure and meaning of programs and that their use improves students'…

Roles of variables is a new concept that captures tacit expert knowledge in a form that can be taught in introductory programming courses. A role describes some stereotypic use of variables, and only ten roles are needed to cover 99% of all variables in novice-level programs. This paper presents the results of an experiment where roles were…

Open Source Software (OSS) has introduced a new dimension in software community. As the development and use of OSS becomes prominent, the question of its integration in education arises. In this paper, the following practices fundamental to projects and processes in software engineering are examined from an OSS perspective: project management;…

The quality of doctoral-level chemistry (N=145), computer science (N=58), geoscience (N=91), mathematics (N=115), physics (N=123), and statistics/biostatistics (N=64) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: program size; characteristics of graduates; reputational…

Teachers at Irvington High School in Fremont, California are looking for meaningful and relevant connections between what students are learning in the classroom and the job skills companies are looking for in the years to come. For Irvington, a Bay Area public high school serving about 2,000 students, that pursuit of a "logical link" led…