Implicit Theories and Self-efficacy in an Introductory Programming Course

Contribution: This study examined student effort and performance in an introductory programming course with respect to student-held implicit theories and self-efficacy. Background: Implicit theories and self-efficacy shed a light into understanding academic success, which must be considered when developing effective learning strategies for programming. Research Questions: Are implicit theories of intelligence and programming, and programming-efficacy related to each other and student success in programming? Is it possible to predict student course performance using a subset of these constructs? Methodology: Two consecutive surveys (N=100 and N=81) were administered to non-CS engineering students in I\c{s}{\i}k University. Findings: Implicit theories and self-beliefs are interrelated and correlated with effort, performance, and previous failures in the course and students explain failure in programming course with "programming-aptitude is fixed" theory, and also that programming is a difficult task for themselves.Comment: Programming Education. 8 page

A collaborative approach to learning programming: a hybrid learning model

The use of cooperative working as a means of developing collaborative skills has been recognised as vital in programming education. This paper presents results obtained from preliminary work to investigate the effectiveness of Pair Programming as a collaborative learning strategy and also its value towards improving programming skills within the laboratory. The potential of Problem Based Learning as a means of further developing cooperative working skills along with problem solving skills is also examined and a hybrid model encompassing both strategies outlined

Teaching Software Engineering through Robotics

This paper presents a newly-developed robotics programming course and reports the initial results of software engineering education in robotics context. Robotics programming, as a multidisciplinary course, puts equal emphasis on software engineering and robotics. It teaches students proper software engineering -- in particular, modularity and documentation -- by having them implement four core robotics algorithms for an educational robot. To evaluate the effect of software engineering education in robotics context, we analyze pre- and post-class survey data and the four assignments our students completed for the course. The analysis suggests that the students acquired an understanding of software engineering techniques and principles

Alianza Latina 2011 flyer

Alianza Latina has their weekly programming to promote the education and expression of latino culture.Alianza Latin

Teaching UbiComp with Sense

Modern computer science education has to take account of the recent changes towards smart ubiquitous computing devices. In addition, existing programming languages are needlessly difficult for novice programmers to learn concepts. We have developed Sense, an extension to the graphical programming language Scratch, and an associated sensor/actuator board. Together, these will allow novice undergraduate students to quickly develop their own smart devices while learning the fundamentals of programming. Students will first study with Sense in 2011 but developmental feedback has been positive

Using Cognitive Computing for Learning Parallel Programming: An IBM Watson Solution

While modern parallel computing systems provide high performance resources, utilizing them to the highest extent requires advanced programming expertise. Programming for parallel computing systems is much more difficult than programming for sequential systems. OpenMP is an extension of C++ programming language that enables to express parallelism using compiler directives. While OpenMP alleviates parallel programming by reducing the lines of code that the programmer needs to write, deciding how and when to use these compiler directives is up to the programmer. Novice programmers may make mistakes that may lead to performance degradation or unexpected program behavior. Cognitive computing has shown impressive results in various domains, such as health or marketing. In this paper, we describe the use of IBM Watson cognitive system for education of novice parallel programmers. Using the dialogue service of the IBM Watson we have developed a solution that assists the programmer in avoiding common OpenMP mistakes. To evaluate our approach we have conducted a survey with a number of novice parallel programmers at the Linnaeus University, and obtained encouraging results with respect to usefulness of our approach

Race Matters: Unequal Opportunities in Education

Summarizes the consequences of racial disparities in education and the barriers to equal opportunity, including educational segregation and unequal resources, opportunities, and discipline. Calls for equity in funding, programming, and teacher quality

Blue - A Language for Teaching Object-Oriented Programming

Teaching object-oriented programming has clearly become an important part of computer science education. We agree with many others that the best place to teach it is in the CS1 introductory course. Many problems with this have been reported in the literature. These mainly result from inadequate languages and environments. Blue is a new language and integrated programming environment, currently under development explicitly for object-oriented teaching. We expect clear advantages from the use of Blue for first year teaching compared to using other available languages. This paper describes the design principles on which the language was based and the most important aspects of the language itself

Measuring enrichment: The assembly and validation of an instrument to assess student self-beliefs in CS1

Educational research shows that self-beliefs can have profound influences on learning behavior and achievement. It follows, then, that beliefs about the nature of programming aptitude (mindset) and the way individuals perceive themselves as programmers (self-concept) could have a salient impact on their programming practice. As such, new teaching methods could be used to support student self-beliefs and thereby encourage practice. However, valid measurement is needed to test this hypothesis. This paper presents the assembly and validation of a measurement instrument to support research into self-enrichment within the introductory programming context. An evaluation shows that the reliability and construct validity of the instrument are adequate, while the concurrent validity of the evaluation framework is satisfactory in the higher education context. However, future validation is required to establish cross-context validity