ITiCSE'10 - Proceedings of the 2010 ACM SIGCSE Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education: Foreword

[No abstract available

Okvir za istraživanje nastave programiranja u srednjoškolskom obrazovanju

This study extensively reviews the literature on teaching programming to middle schoolers, with a qualitative content analysis method, and intends to put forth a research design framework for researchers that will guide them in the processes of planning and designing their research on teaching programming for middle school learners. For access to the relevant literature; the databases were searched by using the following keywords: “computer”, “programming”, and “middle school” together, limiting the findings to the articles published after 2000. As a result, an upward tendency was noted in studies about the teaching of programming at secondary level considering years, most of which are comprised of empirical ones. Also, the existing studies were mostly carried out with 6th graders predominantly employing data collection tools of questionnaires/scales and achievement tests. As for programming tools, Scratch was seen to be the most commonly used one. Although quite a few articles are investigating the context of the programming teaching lesson, some of the studies were found to use programming as a means of teaching mathematics, natural sciences, languages, writing skills, and social sciences. In conclusion, the present study is expected to pave the way for future research by highlighting the overall situation of programming teachingOvo istraživanje naširoko razmatra literaturu o nastavi programiranja u srednjim školama pomoću metode kvalitativne analize sadržaja i pretpostavlja se da će istraživačima ponuditi okvir za dizajniranje istraživanja koji će ih voditi u procesima planiranja i projektiranja njihovih istraživanja o nastavi programiranja u srednjoj školi. Za potrebe pristupa relevantnoj literaturi, pretražili smo baze podataka pomoću ključnih riječi „računalo” , „programiranje” i „srednja škola” uzetih zajedno, ograničavajući rezultate na članke objavljene nakon 2000. godine. Kao rezultat toga, primijetili smo porast trendova u istraživanjima o nastavi programiranja na srednjoškolskoj razini, uzimajući u obzir godine, od kojih je većina istraživanja empirijske naravi. Osim toga, postojeća su istraživanja uglavnom provedene s učenicima šestih razreda koji pretežno koriste alate za prikupljanje podataka u obliku upitnika/ljestvica i testova postignuća. Što se tiče alata za programiranje, Scratch je najčešće korišten. Iako postoji dosta članaka koji istražuju kontekst nastave programiranja, otkriveno je da neka istraživanja navode programiranje kao pomoćno sredstvo u učenju matematike, prirodnih znanosti, jezika, vještina pisanja i društvenih znanosti. Zaključno, valja napomenuti da se očekuje da će sadašnje istraživanje otvoriti put budućim istraživanjima, rasvjetljavajući cjelokupnu situaciju nastave programiranja

A study of novice programmer performance and programming pedagogy.

Identifying and mitigating the difficulties experienced by novice programmers is an active area of research that has embraced a number of research areas. The aim of this research was to perform a holistic study into the causes of poor performance in novice programmers and to develop teaching approaches to mitigate them. A grounded action methodology was adopted to enable the primary concepts of programming cognitive psychology and their relationships to be established, in a systematic and formal manner. To further investigate novice programmer behaviour, two sub-studies were conducted into programming performance and ability. The first sub-study was a novel application of the FP-Tree algorithm to determine if novice programmers demonstrated predictable patterns of behaviour. This was the first study to data mine programming behavioural characteristics rather than the learner’s background information such as age and gender. Using the algorithm, patterns of behaviour were generated and associated with the students’ ability. No patterns of behaviour were identified and it was not possible to predict student results using this method. This suggests that novice programmers demonstrate no set patterns of programming behaviour that can be used determine their ability, although problem solving was found to be an important characteristic. Therefore, there was no evidence that performance could be improved by adopting pedagogies to promote simple changes in programming behaviour beyond the provision of specific problem solving instruction. A second sub-study was conducted using Raven’s Matrices which determined that cognitive psychology, specifically working memory, played an important role in novice programmer ability. The implication was that programming pedagogies must take into consideration the cognitive psychology of programming and the cognitive load imposed on learners. Abstracted Construct Instruction was developed based on these findings and forms a new pedagogy for teaching programming that promotes the recall of abstract patterns while reducing the cognitive demands associated with developing code. Cognitive load is determined by the student’s ability to ignore irrelevant surface features of the written problem and to cross-reference between the problem domain and their mental program model. The former is dealt with by producing tersely written exercises to eliminate distractors, while for the latter the teaching of problem solving should be delayed until the student’s program model is formed. While this does delay the development of problem solving skills, the problem solving abilities of students taught using this pedagogy were found to be comparable with students taught using a more traditional approach. Furthermore, monitoring students’ understanding of these patterns enabled micromanagement of the learning process, and hence explanations were provided for novice behaviour such as difficulties using arrays, inert knowledge and “code thrashing”. For teaching more complex problem solving, scaffolding of practice was investigated through a program framework that could be developed in stages by the students. However, personalising the level of scaffolding required was complicated and found to be difficult to achieve in practice. In both cases, these new teaching approaches evolved as part of a grounded theory study and a clear progression of teaching practice was demonstrated with appropriate evaluation at each stage in accordance with action researc

The Design and Evaluation of an Educational Software Development Process for First Year Computing Undergraduates

First year, undergraduate computing students experience a series of well-known challenges when learning how to design and develop software solutions. These challenges, which include a failure to engage effectively with planning solutions prior to implementation ultimately impact upon the students’ competency and their retention beyond the first year of their studies. In the software industry, software development processes systematically guide the development of software solutions through iterations of analysis, design, implementation and testing. Industry-standard processes are, however, unsuitable for novice programmers as they require prior programming knowledge. This study investigates how a researcher-designed educational software development process could be created for novice undergraduate learners, and the impact of this process on their competence in learning how to develop software solutions. Based on an Action Research methodology that ran over three cycles, this research demonstrates how an educational software development methodology (termed FRESH) and its operationalised process (termed CADET which is a concrete implementation of the FRESH methodology), was designed and implemented as an educational tool for enhancing student engagement and competency in software development. Through CADET, students were reframed as software developers who understand the value in planning and developing software solutions, and not as programmers who prematurely try to implement solutions. While there remain opportunities to further enhance the technical sophistication of the process as it is implemented in practice, CADET enabled the software development steps of analysis and design to be explicit elements of developing software solutions, rather than their more typically implicit inclusion in introductory CS courses. The research contributes to the field of computing education by exploring the possibilities of – and by concretely generating – an appropriate scaffolded methodology and process; by illustrating the use of computational thinking and threshold concepts in software development; and by providing a novel evaluation framework (termed AKM-SOLO) to aid in the continuous improvement of educational processes and courses by measuring student learning experiences and competencies

Investigando o desenvolvimento do processo de abstração na resolução de problemas de geometria molecular mediada pela realidade aumentada

A aplicação de conhecimentos e habilidades voltados à resolução de problemas de geometria molecular é uma tarefa considerada complexa, porém, essencial para o processo de aprendizagem. Normalmente, os estudantes direcionam a atenção para as características superficiais dos problemas, demonstrando dificuldades em atribuir significados a símbolos e a operações submicroscópicas. Como agravante, muitas vezes, somente compreendem tarefas iguais às que realizaram em aula, sendo incapazes de propor soluções adequadas às tarefas diferentes das já praticadas. Dessa forma, para que os alunos tenham sucesso, devem ser competentes em extrair características relevantes, vincular semelhanças ou diferenças a problemas anteriormente vistos e realizar generalizações, enquanto resolvem problemas. Em suma, a aprendizagem de geometria molecular requer dos alunos a capacidade de reconhecer e gerar abstrações. Assim, esta tese investigou como ocorre o desenvolvimento do processo de abstração na resolução de problemas de geometria molecular, mediada pela tecnologia de realidade aumentada (RA). Metodologicamente, a pesquisa caracteriza-se como de abordagem mista. No que concerne à natureza, trata-se de pesquisa aplicada, de objetivo descritivo. Quanto aos procedimentos, baseia-se em um desenho quasiexperimental, no qual a principal estratégia de coleta de dados consistiu em entrevistas semiestruturadas, gravadas em áudio e vídeo e transcritas para posterior análise de conteúdo, com codificação a priori. Deste modo, ao resolver problemas, analisou-se o pensamento de cada participante, sendo definida a representação do conhecimento armazenado, empregada como um recurso, bem como a representação de nova instância, caracterizada pelo processo de resolução do problema em questão. A partir desse procedimento, definiu-se a ocorrência da abstração considerando o nível de abstração entre as representações, bem como o modo de abstração durante o uso das representações. Com a aplicação de um modelo de mapeamento de representação, caracterizou-se o raciocínio como sendo do tipo: baseado em regras, baseado em banco de memória, baseado em similaridade ou protótipo. Como resultado, descobriu-se indícios de que a RA atua no nível de abstração diferente com representação do conhecimento armazenado maior que a representação de nova instância e, ainda, que há influência do nível de abstração no acerto de resoluções de problemas. Encontraramse, igualmente, evidências da existência de uma relação peculiar entre a RA e o modo de abstração parcial, e que esta tecnologia influencia na ocorrência dos tipos de raciocínio de protótipo e baseado em similaridade. Do mesmo modo, descobriu-se indicativos de que a capacidade de visualização molecular mental influi no acerto de resoluções de problemas de geometria molecular. Ao mesmo tempo que existem tendências da abstração, do processo de raciocínio e da capacidade de visualização influenciarem na média de notas.The use of knowledge and acquired skills to solve molecular geometry problems is a complex task, however, essential for the learning process. Usually, students direct their attention to the superficial characteristics of the problems, demonstrating difficulties in assigning meaning to symbols and submicroscopic operations. As an aggravating factor, they often only understand tasks that are similar to those they perform in class, being unable to propose adequate solutions to tasks different from those already practiced. Thus, for students to succeed, they must be competent in extracting relevant features, linking similarities or differences to previously seen problems, and making generalizations while solving problems. In short, learning molecular geometry requires students to be able to recognize and generate abstractions. This thesis investigates the development of abstract representations when students solve molecular geometry problems using augmented reality (AR). The research has been conducted using a quali-quantitative approach, being characterized as an applied research work with a descriptive objective. Regarding its procedures, they were based on a quasiexperimental design, in which the main data collection strategy consisted of semistructured interviews, recorded in audio and video and transcribed for later content analysis, with a priori coding. Students were asked to verbalize their problem solving strategies, and these interviews were analyzed to define the knowledge representation used, the representation of new instances and problem solving process. Based on this procedure, the occurrence of abstraction evidence was defined considering the level of abstraction between the representations, as well as the mode of abstraction during the use of the representations. With the use of a representation mapping model, the students’ reasoning process was characterized as being based on rules, based on memory bank, based on similarity or prototype. As a result, evidence was found that AR operates at a different level of abstraction with a representation of stored knowledge greater than the representation of a new instance, and also that there is an influence of the level of abstraction on the success of problem resolutions. Evidence was also found regarding the existence of a particular relationship between AR and the partial abstraction mode, and that this technology influences the occurrence of prototype and similarity-based reasoning types. Likewise, evidence was found that the students’ capacity for mental molecular visualization influences the correct resolution of molecular geometry problems. At the same time, there is a trend that the average grade of students be influenced by the level of abstraction and the reasoning process used, and the ability to visualize molecular structures

Teaching abstraction in introductory courses

Abstraction is viewed as a key concept in computer science. It is not only an important concept but also one that is difficult to master. This paper focuses on the problems that novices experience when they first encounter this concept. Three assignments from introductory courses are analyzed, to understand why abstraction is difficult for novices. This analysis leads to a number of guidelines that can be used by instructors to support novices learning abstraction