Life-long learning, including development of professional competence, is an essential paradigm of the 21st century. The goal of this research is to analyse the quality and efficiency of the educators' professional competence enhancement programme dubbed "Fundamentals of Programming in Visual Programming Environment Scratch" in accordance…

Video-based modeling is an evidence-based practice for teaching social and communication skills, functional and daily living skills, and some academic skills (i.e., math) to students with autism spectrum disorder. The efficacy of video-based modeling, however, has not yet been established for STEM skills related to science, technology, or…

Data Structures and Algorithms are a central part of Computer Science. Due to their abstract and dynamic nature, they are a difficult topic to learn for many students. To alleviate these learning difficulties, instructors have turned to algorithm visualizations (AV) and AV systems. Research has shown that especially engaging AVs can have an impact…

Introduction: Computer scientists and other researchers often make their programs freely available online. If this software makes a valuable contribution inside or outside of academia then its creators may want to demonstrate this with a suitable indicator, such as download counts. Methods: Download counts, citation counts, labels and licenses…

For the past 4 years, we have been involved in a project that aims to enhance the teaching and learning of experimental analysis and statistics, of environmental and biological sciences students, through computational programming activities (using R code). In this project, through an iterative design, we have developed sequences of R-code-based…

Extracting information efficiently from game/simulation-based assessment (G/SBA) logs requires two things: a well-structured log file and a set of analysis methods. In this report, we propose a generic data model specified as an extensible markup language (XML) schema for the log files of G/SBAs. We also propose a set of analysis methods for…

AutoTutor uses conversational intelligent agents in learning environments. One of the major challenges in developing AutoTutor applications is to assess students' natural language answers to AutoTutor questions. We investigated an AutoTutor dataset with 3358 student answers to 49 AutoTutor questions. In comparisons with human ratings, we found…

Level creation is a creative game-play exercise that resembles problem-posing, and has shown to be engaging and helpful for players to learn about the game's core mechanic. However, in user-authoring environments, users often create levels without considering the game's objective, or with entirely different objectives in mind, resulting in levels…

Building on the author's previous work on Australian national cinema and schooling, this article explores the representation of the female primary school teacher in the television mini-series entitled "Marion" (Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1974). Using narrative analysis, it argues that this representation is disruptive of…

This research explored how K-16 educators learned physical computing, and developed as maker-educators in an online graduate course. With peer support and instructor guidance, these educators designed maker projects using Scratch and Makey Makey, and developed educational maker proposals with plans of teaching the topics of their choice in STEAM…

Recently, technologies based on neuroscientific insights into brain function and structure have been promoted for application in education. The novel practices and environments produced by these technologies require new forms of "biosocial" analysis to unpack their implications for education, learning and governance. This article…

Fred Rogers's television program, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood", connected with young children and educated them about difficult concepts for more than 30 years. The author analyzes and discusses several principles and pedagogical techniques that were used in Rogers's television program, including communicating with children,…

This study aimed to determine undergraduate and associate degree students' computer programming attitude and self-efficacy levels, and compare them according to thinking style, gender, department, weekly study time, and programming experience variables. The study employed the correlational research model. The researcher attempted to reach all…

Computational Thinking (CT) is pervasive in our daily lives and is useful for problem-solving. Decision-making is a crucial part of problem-solving. In the extant literature, problem-solving strategies in educational settings are often conveniently attributed to intuition; however, it is well documented that computer programmers might even have…

The central role of motivation to learn in distance education has been noted, and gamification has been proposed as one approach to promote student motivation. This study explores promoting motivation in a distance education, third-year computer programming course via a gamified approach to improve coursework participation and student experience.…