Students believe that they are computer literate. When asked, students perceive themselves as skilled in a variety of computer applications. This research compares students' perceptions with their reality. Students did not perform well on pretests of Microsoft Office, but improved their posttests scores with instruction. The study also examined…

This article describes a web-based application designed to provide meaningful access to the study of Computer Science to speakers of an African language who have limited experience of using English for academic purposes. Our research is focused upon students of Computer Skills in the Extended Studies Programme at Rhodes University who have studied…

This article demonstrates the evaluation of a German Computer and Law (C&L) seminar, which has been conducted in an experimental, distributed manner with five institutes co-operating. The evaluation was dedicated to the question, in which way the course supported cooperative learning among the students of the different participating…

Sociocultural theories of learning such as Wenger and Lave's situated learning have been suggested as alternatives to cognitive theories of learning like constructivism. This article examines situated learning within the context of computer science (CS) education. Situated learning accurately describes some CS communities like open-source software…

Academic institutions worldwide are constantly trying to refine or even reinvent their Information Systems (IS) curricula to address the needs of industry and government. As many IS curricula emerge, a number of them do not satisfy well recognized standards and even lack critical components. Furthermore, a highly competitive Information Technology…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of an experimental online learning tool on student performance. By applying cognitive load theory to online learning, the experimental tool used was designed to minimize cognitive load during the instructional and learning process. This tool enabled students to work with programming code that…

This study explores how female students compare learning computer technology in a single- versus a mixed- gender school setting. Twelve females participated, all of whom were enrolled in a grade 12 course in Communications' Technology. Data collection included a questionnaire, a semi-structured interview and focus groups. Participants described…

Pedagogical patterns have been around since 1995, but several authors claim their impact is limited. However, these claims are based on authors' own observations and not on methodical evaluations of the use and dissemination of pedagogical patterns. This claim is in contrast to the vision of the creators of pedagogical patterns--they think…

This paper explores what students taking an international project-based course in computer systems strive to learn. Through empirical, phenomenographic work we have identified three different motives that the students strive for: academic achievement; project and team working capacity; and social competence. What a student strives to learn largely…

Medical students will influence future health care considerably. Their professional orientation while at medical school will be related to their future professional development. Therefore, it is important to study this group's view of the role of medical doctors, especially because Swedish health care is currently undergoing major changes and…

Syntactically correct code does not fall from the sky; the process that leads to a student's first executable program is not well understood. At the University of Kent we have begun to explore the "compilation behaviours" of novice programmers, or the behaviours that students exhibit while authoring code; in our initial study, we have…

Hex is a challenging strategy board game for two players. To enhance students' progress in acquiring understanding and practical experience with complex machine intelligence and programming concepts we developed the Machine Intelligence Hex (MIHex) project. The associated undergraduate student assignment is about designing and implementing Hex…

This paper will describe an ESP approach to the design and implementation of computer-mediated communication (CMC) tasks for computer science students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and discuss the effectiveness of the chat feature of Windows NetMeeting as a tool for developing specified language skills. CMC tasks were set within a programme of…

Increasingly, organizations find that they need to integrate large number of information systems in order to support enterprise-wide business initiatives such as e-business, supply chain management and customer relationship management. To date, organizations have largely tended to address information systems (IS) integration in an ad-hoc manner.…

This case provides a real-world semester long project-oriented case study for students enrolled in an electronic commerce course that has a significant development component. The case provides the technical framework in the form of functional requirements for students to design and build a fully functional transaction processing e-commerce Web…