With the abrupt nationwide lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities suspended face-to-face activities. Some of them decided to continue their academic courses, adapting traditional approaches to online learning. An important challenge was to deliver programming labs over the Internet without important methodological changes,…

This paper reports on a design-based study within the context of a 3-day "digital making" (DM) summer camp attended by a group of students (aged 11-13) in grades 5 and 6. During the camp, students were presented with a set of mathematical problems to solve in a block-based programming environment, which was connected to various physical…

In the school year 2020-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed distance learning (in Italian, the DAD acronym is used). Therefore, the Degree Course in Primary Education Sciences of the University of Perugia has proposed an innovative programme for the training of future teachers by developing a distance learning laboratory focusing coding and…

This article presents an evaluation of edCrumble, a blended learning authoring tool for teachers. The tool visually represents learning designs and integrates data analytics to scaffold teacher design decisions. In addition to assessing the usability of edCrumble using Usability Metric for User Experience questionnaire, analyses of participant…

Students learn many concepts in the introductory statistics course, but even our most successful students end up with rigid, ritualized knowledge that does not transfer easily to new situations. In this article we describe our attempt to apply theories and findings from learning science to the design of a statistics course that aims to help…

Problems associated with time-cost trade-offs in project networks, which are commonly referred to as crashing problems, date back nearly 60 years. Many prominent management science textbooks provide a traditional linear programming (LP) formulation for a classic project crashing problem, in which the time-cost trade-off for each activity is…

R and Python are commonly used software languages for data analytics. Using these languages as the course software for the introductory course gives students practical skills for applying statistical concepts to data analysis. However, the reliance upon the command line is perceived by the typical nontechnical introductory student as sufficiently…

The assessment of program functionality can generally be accomplished with straight-forward unit tests. However, assessing the design quality of a program is a much more difficult and nuanced problem. Design quality is an important consideration since it affects the readability and maintainability of programs. Assessing design quality and giving…

This paper describes a study of teaching a programming language in a C programming course by having students assemble and program a low-cost mobile robot. Writing their own programs to define the robot's behavior raised students' motivation. Working in small groups, students programmed the robots by using the control structures of structured…

Teaching is the process of conveying knowledge and skills to learners. It involves preventing misunderstandings or correcting misconceptions that learners have acquired. Thus, effective teaching relies on solid knowledge of the discipline, but also a good grasp of where learners are likely to trip up or misunderstand. In programming, there is much…

Transitioning to university is recognised as a challenging endeavour for commencing students. For commencing Computer Science students specifically, evidence suggests a link between poor performance in introductory technical courses, such as programming, and high attrition rates. Building resilience in students, particularly at the start of their…

By integrating computational thinking (CT) based mathematical reasoning with early childhood education through programming a dinosaur game in Scratch, this study aims to enhance the pedagogical skills of pre-service teachers by using learning objects (LOs). Also, explores frameworks for LOs construction to align with pedagogical goals, emphasizing…

In our age of big data and growing computational power, versatility in data analysis is important. This study presents a flexible way to combine statistics and machine learning for data analysis of a large-scale educational survey. The authors used statistical and machine learning methods to explore German students' attitudes towards information…

Many countries have incorporated computational thinking (CT) and programming languages into their science and technology courses. Students can improve their CT ability by learning programming languages. Moreover, situated learning enables students to generate knowledge and master problem-solving skills through interaction with situations. This…

Making students become intrinsically motivated to participate in daily class activities is an open challenge that has been addressed in different ways. In this article, we evaluate the impact of an educational innovation project, named TrivialCV, in terms of student motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes. We analyze the impact of two types…