The Scratch programming language is an introductory programming language for students. It is also a visual concurrent programming language, where multiple threads are executed simultaneously. Synchronization in concurrent languages is a complex task for novices to understand. Our research is focused on strategies and methods applied by novice…

Computer science and coding skills are widely recognized as a valuable asset in the current and projected job market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 37.5 percent growth from 2012 to 2022 in the "computer systems design and related services" industry--from 1,620,300 jobs in 2012 to an estimated 2,229,000 jobs in 2022. Yet some…

Social media (SM) support new approaches to learning that rely on voluntary, peer-to-peer communication using devices and software provided and managed by students rather than on institutional course management systems. We present one case of such an approach with first-year university students (n = 86) in Thailand using SM for asking and…

The paper examines how computational thinking can be taught to young children with the use of educational robotics using the kit LEGO WeDo. Computational thinking was measured in terms of four sub-skills, namely, sequencing, correspondence between actions and instructions, debugging, and flow of control. Students were assigned to an experimental…

Contribution: A learning-by-teaching methodology through games can be used to promote informatics (computer science) in primary and secondary education. Applying the proposed activities can change students' perception of informatics from seeing it as merely using computers to seeing its relationship with mathematics. The experience can also help…

This paper elaborates on the notion of object-oriented collaborative learning by building on empirical material from two case studies in higher education. Prior empirical findings show how knowledge objects are evolving entities, shaped by the interactions between participants, and how students learn from engaging in knowledge practice that…

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields are considered catalysts for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Yet, particularly for STEM fields, girls and women, for a multitude of social, cultural and psychological reasons, engage and participate at a lower rate than boys and men. This research…

Short-term outreach interventions are conducted to raise young students' awareness of the computer science (CS) field. Typically, these interventions are targeted at K--12 students, attempting to encourage them to study CS in higher education. This study is based on a series of extra-curricular outreach events that introduced students to the…

In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney was a documentary producer at Channel 13 when Lloyd Morrisett, then Vice President at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, offered her an opportunity that would change the landscape of children's media forever. The Carnegie Corporation provided funding for a three-month study during which Joan traveled the country to…

Learning to program is a complex task, and the impact of different pedagogical approaches to teach this skill has been hard to measure. This study examined the performance data of seven cohorts of students (N = 1168) learning programming under three different pedagogical approaches. These pedagogical approaches varied either in the length of the…

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts over 8 million job openings in IT and computing, including 1 million cybersecurity postings, over the current five-year period. This paper presents lessons learned in preparing middle-school students in rural Georgia for future careers in computer science/ IT by teaching computer programming in the free,…

The ideal of self-paced learning, which was introduced nearly 50 years ago by Keller in his Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), has not yet been widely adopted. In spite of its perceived promise of helping students to learn at the speed aligned to their individual backgrounds, motivation, and skills, PSI has been challenging to implement.…

Computer programming has for decades posed several difficulties for students of all educational levels. A number of teaching approaches have been proposed over the years but none seems to fulfil the needs of students nowadays. Students use computers mainly for playing games and the Internet and as quite a few researchers state this aspect of…

This paper analyzes the results of a diagnostic study carried out with second year students of the computational sciences majors at University of Oriente, Cuba, to determine the limitations that they present in computational algorithmization. An exploratory research was developed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The results allowed…

Developing students' algorithmic and computational thinking is currently a major objective for primary and secondary education in many countries around the globe. Literature suggests that students face at various difficulties in programming processes, because of their mental models about basic programming constructs. Arrays constitute the first…