The variety and complexity of potentially-related data resources available for querying--webpages, databases, data warehouses--has been growing ever more rapidly. There is a growing need to pose integrative queries "across" multiple such sources, exploiting foreign keys and other means of interlinking data to merge information from diverse…

Location-based services (LBS for short) providers require users' current locations to answer their location-based queries, e.g., range and nearest-neighbor queries. Revealing personal location information to potentially untrusted service providers could create privacy risks for users. To this end, our objective is to design a privacy-preserving…

Although software testing has been well-studied in computer science, it has received little attention in natural language processing. Nonetheless, a fully developed methodology for glass box evaluation and testing of language processing applications already exists in the field methods of descriptive linguistics. This work lays out a number of…

The author has undergone a major shift in the way of teaching his undergraduate computer programming courses. In the classroom, the teacher's computer is connected to a splitter and a video projector that display the computer's screen to the entire class. Using this technology, the programming language itself is used live in class to help the…

The gender digital divide has been widely discussed and researched over the years. Previous studies have focused on a number of factors such as computer attitude, computer anxiety, computer self-efficacy, and computer experience. This study empirically tested the sensitivity of a learning style instrument, the "Gregorc Style Delineator"…

Social networking and communications tools have become widely used in entertainment and social applications and there is growing interest in their use in formal education applications. Distance education and especially those types that are based on self-paced programming models may be the biggest beneficiaries of the use of these new tools to…

Digital game-players devote a large amount of their time to discovering rules hidden in the code and discoverable through empirical study, experiments, and developing or rediscovering the mathematical formulae governing the code. They do this through their own independent play as they test areas, gear and abilities, through data mining using…

With universities having difficulty attracting students to study information technology (IT), the scores needed for entry into IT degrees have dropped markedly. IT schools are thus having to cope by adjusting their introductory courses to ensure that students will still learn what is expected but without negatively impacting on pass rates. This…

Agile methodologies have become increasingly popular among software developers as evidenced by industrial participation at related conferences. The popularity of agile practices over traditional techniques partly stems from the fact that these practices provide for more customer involvement and better accommodate rapidly changing requirements,…

In order to evaluate student learning achievement, several aspects should be considered, such as exercises, examinations, and observations. Traditionally, such an evaluation calculates a final score using a weighted average method after awarding numerical scores, and then determines a grade according to a set of established crisp criteria.…

Traditionally, learning resources are created by an instructor and distributed to their students. A contributing-student pedagogy (CSP) is one in which this responsibility shifts, placing students in control of creating the resources and sharing them with their peers. Technology plays a central role in supporting the collection and distribution of…

Students' collaboration while learning could provide better learning environments. Collaboration assumes social interactions which occur in student groups. Social theories emphasize positive influence of such interactions on learning. In order to create an appropriate learning environment that enables social interactions, it is important to…

This study examined the average effects of schools' third through fifth grade gifted programming policy in mathematics and reading on overall school achievement, on gifted students' achievement and academic attitudes and on nongifted students' achievement and academic attitudes. Data and results represent a broad, national look at school…

Although most computer users will never need to write a computer program, many students enjoy the challenge of creating one. Computer programming enhances students' problem solving by forcing students to break a problem into its component pieces and reassemble it in a generic format that can be understood by a nonsentient entity. It promotes…

A computer programming class for students of mechanical engineering was redesigned and assessed: Cognitive Load Theory was used to redesign the content; online technologies were used to redesign the delivery. Student learning improved and the dropout rate was reduced. This article reports on both attitudinal and objective assessment: comparing…