Teaching introductory computer programming and choosing the proper tools and programming languages are challenging tasks. Most of the existing tools are not fully integrated into systems to support the teaching-learning processes. The present paper describes the usability evaluation of the Virtual Programming Lab module for Moodle (VPL-Moodle)…

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…

Contribution: This article has shown that self-efficacy in performing complex computer programming tasks and the self-regulation of electrical and electronics engineering undergraduate students varies with respect to the class standing and prior experience in computer programming. Background: Computer programming is an essential skill that all…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the quality design criteria for developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Currently, there are limited studies that highlight the required design criteria for the MOOC programming courses. A descriptive analysis was conducted to examine the characteristics of the three important quality design…

True to the field of Cultural Disability Studies in Education (CDSE), this project adopts an explicitly interdisciplinary approach in order to explore representations of disability and the related social attitudes and experiences. Disability studies and radio studies are brought together to predicate and inform the analysis of a sample of…

Despite the fact that the sophisticated technologies are a substantial component of children's everyday environment, of the space within which they act, play and learn--the world of complex technological systems (their characteristics, and the knowledge and skills involved in operating, designing and programming them) is almost ignored in the…

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Jeffrey Harring and Ms. Tessa Johnson introduce the linear mixed effects (LME) model as a flexible general framework for simultaneously modeling continuous repeated measures data with a scientifically defensible function that adequately summarizes both individual change as well as the average response. The module…

Computational thinking has been taught in elementary classrooms in other countries for many years, but in the United States this has only been a focus recently due to the drastic shortage of computer scientists. Early exposure to computational thinking has been shown to motivate students to pursue STEM careers, especially computer science (Jin,…