Teaching Discrete Structures: A systematic review of the literature

This survey paper reviews a large sample of publications on the teaching of discrete structures and discrete mathematics in computer science curricula. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. A number of broad themes in discrete structures education are identified relating to course content, teaching strategies and the means of evaluating the success of a course

Teaching Discrete Structures: A systematic review of the literature

This survey paper reviews a large sample of publications on the teaching of discrete structures and discrete mathematics in computer science curricula. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. A number of broad themes in discrete structures education are identified relating to course content, teaching strategies and the means of evaluating the success of a course

Promoting Programming Learning. Engagement, Automatic Assessment with Immediate Feedback in Visualizations

The skill of programming is a key asset for every computer science student. Many studies have shown that this is a hard skill to learn and the outcomes of programming courses have often been substandard. Thus, a range of methods and tools have been developed to assist students’ learning processes. One of the biggest fields in computer science education is the use of visualizations as a learning aid and many visualization based tools have been developed to aid the learning process during last few decades. Studies conducted in this thesis focus on two different visualizationbased tools TRAKLA2 and ViLLE. This thesis includes results from multiple empirical studies about what kind of effects the introduction and usage of these tools have on students’ opinions and performance, and what kind of implications there are from a teacher’s point of view. The results from studies in this thesis show that students preferred to do web-based exercises, and felt that those exercises contributed to their learning. The usage of the tool motivated students to work harder during their course, which was shown in overall course performance and drop-out statistics. We have also shown that visualization-based tools can be used to enhance the learning process, and one of the key factors is the higher and active level of engagement (see. Engagement Taxonomy by Naps et al., 2002). The automatic grading accompanied with immediate feedback helps students to overcome obstacles during the learning process, and to grasp the key element in the learning task. These kinds of tools can help us to cope with the fact that many programming courses are overcrowded with limited teaching resources. These tools allows us to tackle this problem by utilizing automatic assessment in exercises that are most suitable to be done in the web (like tracing and simulation) since its supports students’ independent learning regardless of time and place. In summary, we can use our course’s resources more efficiently to increase the quality of the learning experience of the students and the teaching experience of the teacher, and even increase performance of the students. There are also methodological results from this thesis which contribute to developing insight into the conduct of empirical evaluations of new tools or techniques. When we evaluate a new tool, especially one accompanied with visualization, we need to give a proper introduction to it and to the graphical notation used by tool. The standard procedure should also include capturing the screen with audio to confirm that the participants of the experiment are doing what they are supposed to do. By taken such measures in the study of the learning impact of visualization support for learning, we can avoid drawing false conclusion from our experiments. As computer science educators, we face two important challenges. Firstly, we need to start to deliver the message in our own institution and all over the world about the new – scientifically proven – innovations in teaching like TRAKLA2 and ViLLE. Secondly, we have the relevant experience of conducting teaching related experiment, and thus we can support our colleagues to learn essential know-how of the research based improvement of their teaching. This change can transform academic teaching into publications and by utilizing this approach we can significantly increase the adoption of the new tools and techniques, and overall increase the knowledge of best-practices. In future, we need to combine our forces and tackle these universal and common problems together by creating multi-national and multiinstitutional research projects. We need to create a community and a platform in which we can share these best practices and at the same time conduct multi-national research projects easily.Siirretty Doriast

Proceedings of the Second Program Visualization Workshop, 2002

The Program Visualization Workshops aim to bring together researchers who design and construct program visualizations and, above all, educators who use and evaluate visualizations in their teaching. The first workshop took place in July 2000 at Porvoo, Finland. The second workshop was held in cooperation with ACM SIGCSE and took place at HornstrupCentret, Denmark in June 2002, immediately following the ITiCSE 2002 Conference in Aarhus, Denmark

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2009

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics

Visual algorithm simulation

Understanding data structures and algorithms, both of which are abstract concepts, is an integral part of software engineering and elementary computer science education. However, people usually have difficulty in understanding abstract concepts and processes such as procedural encoding of algorithms and data structures. One way to improve their understanding is to provide visualizations to make the abstract concepts more concrete. This thesis presents the design, implementation and evaluation for the Matrix application framework that occupies a unique niche between the following two domains. In the first domain, called algorithm animation, abstractions of the behavior of fundamental computer program operations are visualized. In the second domain, called algorithm simulation, the framework for exploring and understanding algorithms and data structures is exhibited. First, an overview and theoretical basis for the application framework is presented. Second, the different roles are defined and examined for realizing the idea of algorithm simulation. The roles considered includes users (i.e., learners and instructors), visualizers (those who specify the visualizations), programmers (those who wrote the original algorithms to be visualized), and the developers (those who continue to design and implement the Matrix framework). Finally, the effectiveness of the algorithm simulation exercises, the main application embodied in the framework, is studied. The current tool is utilized for delivering, representing, solving, and submitting tracing exercises that can be automatically assessed, and thus provides meaningful feedback on learners performance.reviewe

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2010

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physic

The Learning Styles and Approaches of Students Studying the Fundamental Algorithmic Concepts course at the University of the Witwatersrand

Student Number : 8109673 - MSc research report - School of Science Education - Faculty of ScienceMany students fail the Fundamental Algorithmic Concepts course, in first year Computer Science at the University of the Witwatersrand. To obtain an understanding of why this occurs, the learning styles and learning approaches of the students studying the course and the relationship of these concepts with student grades were researched. A predominately qualitative paradigm was used, supplemented with quantitative data. Two research designs were selected: a survey to get a broad overview of the sample and an ethnographic design to provide an in-depth description of a small group. Existing instruments were used for the survey, namely Felder and Soloman’s Index of Learning Styles and a learning approach diagnostic test that was constructed in South Africa. An interview with open-ended questions was used for the ethnographic research. Contrary to expectations, the results of the study indicated that the adoption of a deep learning approach did not imply success. The findings suggest that a strategic learning approach may be required to achieve good grades. In contrast to other studies, over 65% of the sample population were black students. It was found that black students tend to adopt a deeper learning approach than the rest of the students. From a learning style perspective there was some new evidence to indicate that the more intuitive or global a student was, the deeper the approach the student adopted to learning. A large percentage (over 80%) of the population were visual learners and an unusually high percentage (over 60%) were reflective learners. The lecturer should match the workload and assessment methods with the desired learning approach of the students. The lecturer should also encourage the students to adopt a strategic learning approach where appropriate. In addition, the lecturer should pay particular attention to incorporating teaching styles that accommodate students with visual and active learning style preferences