Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Visual and Textual Programming Languages: A Systematic Review of the Literature

It is well documented, and has been the topic of much research, that Computer Science courses tend to have higher than average drop out rates at third level. This is a problem that needs to be addressed with urgency but also caution. The required number of Computer Science graduates is growing every year but the number of graduates is not meeting this demand and one way that this problem can be alleviated is to encourage students at an early age towards studying Computer Science courses. This paper presents a systematic literature review on the role of visual and textual programming languages when learning to program, particularly as a first programming language. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. This study will give insight into whether or not the current approaches to teaching young learners programming are viable, and examines what we can do to increase the interest and retention of these students as they progress through their education.Comment: 18 pages (including 2 bibliography pages), 3 figure

Development of Comprehensive Devnagari Numeral and Character Database for Offline Handwritten Character Recognition

In handwritten character recognition, benchmark database plays an important role in evaluating the performance of various algorithms and the results obtained by various researchers. In Devnagari script, there is lack of such official benchmark. This paper focuses on the generation of offline benchmark database for Devnagari handwritten numerals and characters. The present work generated 5137 and 20305 isolated samples for numeral and character database, respectively, from 750 writers of all ages, sex, education, and profession. The offline sample images are stored in TIFF image format as it occupies less memory. Also, the data is presented in binary level so that memory requirement is further reduced. It will facilitate research on handwriting recognition of Devnagari script through free access to the researchers.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures, journal pape