SCOF: A Standardised, Customisable Online Feedback Tool

Increasing pressures on staff, combined with increased requests for feedback from students mean that there is less time to do more things. Investigation into potential methods to assist the staff of the School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at City University London in their feedback activities identified that a combination of bespoke feedback combined with a standardised scheme (or rubric) may give the best results. The stand-alone SCOF tool was developed to address this observation and allows staff to create formatted feedback sheets quickly in different environments, using tools ranging from desktop computers to mobile telephones and tablets. It is currently about to undergo an institution-wide evaluation and will subsequently be made freely available to other institutions. This paper outlines the requirements of the tool, its usage, evaluation progress and future work to be undertaken, and includes a link to a public demonstration version of the tool

TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATIC FEEDBACK SYSTEM FOR PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENT

Programming problems and assignment are considered essential elements of software engineering and computer scienceeducation. We propose a framework with which student programming assignments can receive automatic feedback on thesemantics of their program codes. The proposed system increases the interest to study and understand the concept of theprogramming subjects. The objective is to assist teachers to promote programming as a subject and increase, increasestudent’s performance while improving the quality of content delivered in computer programing courses.Keywords: Programming, students, framework, feedback, understanding and assignments

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum

The field of specialization known as the science of learning is not, in fact, one field. Science of learning is a term that serves as an umbrella for many lines of research, theory, and application. A term with an even wider reach is Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006). The present book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings (Science of Instruction, Mayer 2011). Although much, but not all, of what is presented in this book is focused on learning in college and university settings, teachers of all academic levels may find the recommendations made by chapter authors of service. The overarching theme of this book is on the interplay between the science of learning, the science of instruction, and the science of assessment (Mayer, 2011). The science of learning is a systematic and empirical approach to understanding how people learn. More formally, Mayer (2011) defined the science of learning as the “scientific study of how people learn” (p. 3). The science of instruction (Mayer 2011), informed in part by the science of learning, is also on display throughout the book. Mayer defined the science of instruction as the “scientific study of how to help people learn” (p. 3). Finally, the assessment of student learning (e.g., learning, remembering, transferring knowledge) during and after instruction helps us determine the effectiveness of our instructional methods. Mayer defined the science of assessment as the “scientific study of how to determine what people know” (p.3). Most of the research and applications presented in this book are completed within a science of learning framework. Researchers first conducted research to understand how people learn in certain controlled contexts (i.e., in the laboratory) and then they, or others, began to consider how these understandings could be applied in educational settings. Work on the cognitive load theory of learning, which is discussed in depth in several chapters of this book (e.g., Chew; Lee and Kalyuga; Mayer; Renkl), provides an excellent example that documents how science of learning has led to valuable work on the science of instruction. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology. We might have selected other topics (and, thus, other authors) that have their research base in behavior analysis, computational modeling and computer science, neuroscience, etc. We made the selections we did because the work of our authors ties together nicely and seemed to us to have direct applicability in academic settings

Code Puzzle Completion Problems in Support of Learning Programming Independently

Middle school children often lack access to formal educational opportunities to learn computer programming. One way to help these children may be to provide tools that enable them to learn programming on their own independently. However, in order for these tools to be effective they must help learners acquire programming knowledge and also be motivating in independent contexts. I explore the design space of using motivating code puzzles with a method known to support independent learning: completion problems. Through this exploration, I developed code puzzle completion problems and an introductory curriculum introducing novice programmers to basic programming constructs. Through several evaluations, I demonstrate that code puzzle completion problems can motivate learners to acquire new programming knowledge independently. Specifically, I found that code puzzle completion problems are more effective and efficient for learning programming constructs independently compared to tutorials. Puzzle users performed 33% better on transfer tasks compared to tutorial users, while taking 21% less time to complete the learning materials. Additionally, I present evidence that children are motivated to choose to use the code puzzles because they find the experience enjoyable, challenging, and valuable towards developing their programming skills. Given the choice between using tutorials and puzzles, only 10% of participants opted to use more tutorials than puzzles. Further, 80% of participants also stated a preference towards the puzzles because they simply enjoyed the experience of using puzzles more than the tutorials. The results suggest that code puzzle completion problems are a promising approach for motivating and supporting independent learning of programming