This study is primarily focused on assessing the students' logical thinking and cognitive levels in an online collaborative environment. The aim is to investigate whether the online collaboration has significant impact to the students' cognitive abilities. The assessment of the logical thinking involved the use of the online Group Assessment…

European universities are involved in a process of change to ensure they are more comparable, compatible and coherent systems of higher education inside the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). In addition, scouting takes more than 100 years educating young people around the world. This non-formal education is based on values and its method is…

Current schemes to categorise MOOC students result from a single view on the population which either contains the engagement of the students or demographics or self reported motivation. We propose a new hierarchical student categorisation, which uses common online activities capturing both engagement and achievement of MOOC students. A first level…

Research conducted by the Montana University System is a key driver of economic development in the state of Montana. Scientific research conducted in Montana has the potential to solve today's problems in rural health, agriculture, nutrition, materials science, energy and computational/engineering science. Research also prepares the next…

As part of the Bachelor's degree of nursing education, nursing students are exposed to the increasingly complex world of Information Technology. Aim: To evaluate the feasibility of a situated learning approach for Information Technology course by assessing students' perceptions at the end of the course. Methods: Course participants completed a pre…

This study investigates relationships between self-efficacy, self-regulated learning strategy use and academic performance. Participants were 96 undergraduate students working on projects with three subtasks (idea generation task, methodical task and data collection) in a blended learning environment. Task self-efficacy was measured with…

This paper documents four years of a novel approach to teaching a two-course sequence in software engineering as part of the ABET-accredited computer science curriculum at the College of Charleston. This approach is team-based and centers on learning software engineering in the context of open source software projects. In the first course, teams…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate if we could improve retention by redesigning an online programming course from a gender perspective, while maintaining the focus on preferable and sustainable learning approaches. The study builds on results from an earlier study that investigated the relationship between approaches to learning…

Less than 20% of undergraduates earning a degree in engineering are women, and even more alarming is minority women earn a mere 3.1% of those degrees. This paper reports on a qualitative study examining Latinas' identity development toward and in undergraduate engineering and computer science studies using a sociocultural theory of learning. Three…

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of different collaborative group formations (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous in terms of prior computer knowledge levels) for learning complex tasks in computer programming from the perspective of cognitive load theory. Web-based learning platform was used to…

In this article, we address the question of why computing students choose to learn computing topics on their own. A better understanding of why some students choose to learn on their own may help us to motivate other students to develop this important skill. In addition, it may help in curriculum design; if we need to leave some topics out of our…

Managing IT security and assurance is a top priority for organizations. Aware of the costs associated with a security or privacy breach, organizations are constantly vigilant about protecting their data and IT systems. In addition, organizations are investing heavily in IT resources to keep up with the challenges of managing their IT security and…

Controversy and fanfare accompanied the announcement in 2010 by Mattel, Inc. of the Barbie® doll's 126th career--computer engineer. Even though women have been and still are in a minority in the information technology (IT) and computer science (CS) fields, enough women voted for the computer engineer as the next career for Barbie® on Mattel's…

English-medium institutions of higher education host increasing numbers of English-as-a second-language (ESL) learners in the US. English language skill is vital to their progress. Previous research examined reading challenges and expectations faculty have for their first-year students within five popular majors for international students…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is as full of challenges as it is of possibilities. We will explore the challenges while seeking realistic solutions as eight Computer Science professors teach their subjects through English for the first time. We hope to gain insights into the bilingual classroom at the university level where…