Background: Bioinformatics--the use of computers in biology--is of major and increasing importance to biological sciences and medicine. We conducted a preliminary investigation of the value of bringing practical, university-level bioinformatics education to the school level. We conducted voluntary activities for pupils at two schools in Scotland…

Computer programming is challenging to teach and difficult for students to learn. Instructors have searched for ways to improve student learning in programming courses. In an attempt to foster hands-on learning and to increase student learning outcomes in a programming course, the authors conducted an exploratory study to examine student created…

As both the frequency and the severity of network breaches have increased in recent years, it is essential that cybersecurity is incorporated into the core of business operations. Evidence from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012) indicates that there is, and will continue to be, a severe shortage of cybersecurity…

Math self-concept (MSC) is considered an important predictor of the pursuit of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Women's underrepresentation in the STEM fields is often attributed to their consistently lower ratings on MSC relative to men. Research in this area typically considers STEM in the aggregate and does not account…

The current study aimed at diagnosing the language needs of Iranian undergraduate students of computer engineering in order to find out whether there is any significant difference in perceptions between the students and their ESAP (English for Specific Academic Purpose) teachers, concerning their Reading skill needs. To conduct the intended…

Distributed learning is derived from the concept of distributed resources. Different institutions around the globe connected through network and the learners are diverse, located in the different cultures and communities. Distributed learning provides global standards of quality to all learners through synchronous and asynchronous communications…

To address the special challenges of teaching computer science, adequate development of teachers' competencies during their education is extremely important. In particular, pedagogical content knowledge and teachers' beliefs and motivational orientations play an important role in effective teaching. This research field has been sparsely…

Agile software development is an iterative and incremental methodology, where solutions evolve from self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Pair programming is a type of agile software development technique where two programmers work together with one computer for developing software. This paper reports the results of the pair programming…

This study aimed at developing a Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game-based (MORPG) Learning system which enabled instructors to construct a game scenario and manage sharable and reusable learning content for multiple courses. It used the curriculum of "Introduction to Computer Science" as a study case to assess students' learning…

In this article, we surveyed literature related to undergraduate computer science capstone courses. The survey was organized around course and project issues. Course issues included: course models, learning theories, course goals, course topics, student evaluation, and course evaluation. Project issues included: software process models, software…

The purpose of this study is to investigate and conceptualize the ranks of importance of social cognitive variables on university students' computer programming performances. Spatial ability, working memory, self-efficacy, gender, prior knowledge and the universities students attend were taken as variables to be analyzed. The study has been…

Standardising learning content and teaching approaches is not considered to be the best practice in contemporary education. This approach does not differentiate learners based on their individual abilities and preferences. The present research integrates a pedagogical theory "Universal Design for Learning" ("UDL") with an…

The combination of Open Sim and Scratch4OS can be a worthwhile innovation for introductory programming courses, using a Community of Inquiry (CoI) model as a theoretical instructional design framework. This empirical study had a threefold purpose to present: (a) an instructional design framework for the beneficial formalization of a virtual…

This research explores the difficulties faced by many migrant, refugee, and immigrant adults confronted with technological ubiquity in economically developed countries. Preparing migrant adult learners for the digital world by building digital literacy skills can help to maintain home language proficiency, support English language learning, and…

The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational opportunities, and preparation needed for them to choose computer science as a…