We know from research that there is an intimate relationship between student learning and the context of learning. What is not known or understood well enough is the relationship of the students' background and previous studies to the understanding and learning of the subject area--here, computer science (CS). To show the contextual influences on…

Promoting and sustaining effective discussion--that which contributes to learning--is a skill that eludes many instructors (Darling-Hammond, 2008; Ge, Yamashiro, & Lee, 2000). This study explored the role and strategies of an expert instructor in an online advanced instructional design (ID) course that utilized a case-based learning (CBL)…

With the steady development of online education and online learning environments, possibilities to support social interactions between students have advanced significantly. This study examined the relationship between indicators of social presence and academic performance. Social presence is defined as students' ability to engage socially with an…

This study takes a multidimensional approach to citation analysis, examining citations in multiple subfields of engineering, from both scholarly journals and doctoral dissertations. The three major goals of the study are to determine whether there are differences between citations drawn from dissertations and those drawn from journal articles; to…

Many people are first exposed to code through web development, yet little is known about the barriers beginners face in these formative experiences. In this article, we describe a study of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory web development course taken by both computing majors and general education students. Using data collected…

The object of this experimental study is to measure the effectiveness of a blended learning environment which is laid out on the basis of features for face to face and online environments. The study was applied to 110 students who attend to Atilim University, Ankara, Turkey and take Introduction to Computers Course. During the application,…

Computer Science 1 (CS1), the first course taken by college-level computer science (CS) majors, has traditionally suffered from high failure rates. Efforts to understand this phenomenon have considered a wide range of predictors of CS success, such as prior programming experience, math ability, learning style, and gender, with findings that are…

Many students are entering Computer Science education with limited exposure to operating systems and applications other than those produced by Apple or Microsoft. This gap in familiarity with the Open Source community can quickly be bridged with a simple exercise that can also be used to strengthen two other important current computing concepts,…

This paper presents Diagram, a learning environment for object-oriented modelling (OOM) with UML class diagrams. Diagram an open environment, in which the teacher can add new exercises without constraints on the vocabulary or the size of the diagram. The interface includes methodological help, encourages self-correcting and self-monitoring, and…

The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate students' concept images about class, object, and their relationship and to help them enhance their learning of these notions with a visualization tool. Fifty-six second-year university students participated in the study. To investigate his/her concept images, the researcher developed a survey…

Getting called into the boss's office isn't always fun. Memories of trips to the school principal's office flash through one's mind. But the day last year that the author was called in to meet with their division vice president turned out to be a very good day. Executives at his company, Microsoft, had noticed the program he created in his spare…

The internet gives individuals access to learning through online technologies. The prolific use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in higher education institutions makes Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills or e-skills very important. ICT skill levels have been positively related to students' effectiveness and efficiency in…

Deliberate practice is important in many areas of learning, including that of learning to program computers. However, beliefs about the nature of personal traits, known as "mindsets," can have a profound impact on such practice. Previous research has shown that those with a "fixed mindset" believe their traits cannot change;…

Educational software systems have an increasingly significant presence in engineering sciences. They aim to improve students' attitudes and knowledge acquisition typically through visual representation and simulation of complex algorithms and mechanisms or hardware systems that are often not available to the educational institutions. This paper…

We survey the literature about the teaching and learning of recursive programming. After a short history of the advent of recursion in programming languages and its adoption by programmers, we present curricular approaches to recursion, including a review of textbooks and some programming methodology, as well as the functional and imperative…