Designing Engaging Learning Experiences in Programming

In this paper we describe work to investigate the creation of engaging programming learning experiences. Background research informed the design of four fieldwork studies to explore how programming tasks could be framed to motivate learners. Our empirical findings from these four field studies are summarized here, with a particular focus upon one – Whack a Mole – which compared the use of a physical interface with the use of a screen-based equivalent interface to obtain insights into what made for an engaging learning experience. Emotions reported by two sets of participant undergraduate students were analyzed, identifying the links between the emotions experienced during programming and their origin. Evidence was collected of the very positive emotions experienced by learners programming with a physical interface (Arduino) in comparison with a similar program developed using a screen-based equivalent interface. A follow-up study provided further evidence of the motivation of personalized design of programming tangible physical artefacts. Collating all the evidence led to the design of a set of ‘Learning Dimensions’ which may provide educators with insights to support key design decisions for the creation of engaging programming learning experiences

Haskelite: A Step-By-Step Interpreter for Teaching Functional Programming

This paper describes Haskelite, a step-by-step interpreter for a small subset of Haskell. Haskelite is designed to help teach fundamental concepts of functional programming, namely: evaluation by rewriting; definition of functions using pattern-matching; recursion; higher-order functions; and on-demand evaluation. The interpreter is implemented in Elm and compiled to JavaScript, so it runs on the browser and requires no installation. This is on-going work and has yet to be fully evaluated; we present some initial experience in the classroom and highlight some points for improvement

Open Educational Content for Digital Public Libraries

If the production of digital content for teaching -- particularly free content -- is to expand substantially, there must be mechanisms to establish a link to fame and fortune that was not perceived in a pre-digital world. How that might be done is the central question this report addresses, in the context of examining the movement for open educational content. Understanding that movement requires delving into the history of what may seem, on first pass, a totally unrelated field of endeavor. The reader's patience is requested....

Teaching how to program using automated assessment and functional glossy games (Experience Report)

Our department has long been an advocate of the functional-first school of programming and has been teaching Haskell as a first language in introductory programming course units for 20 years. Although the functional style is largely beneficial, it needs to be taught in an enthusiastic and captivating way to fight the unusually high computer science drop-out rates and appeal to a heterogeneous population of students.This paper reports our experience of restructuring, over the last 5 years, an introductory laboratory course unit that trains hands-on functional programming concepts and good software development practices. We have been using game programming to keep students motivated, and following a methodology that hinges on test-driven development and continuous bidirectional feedback. We summarise successes and missteps, and how we have learned from our experience to arrive at a model for comprehensive and interactive functional game programming assignments and a general functionally-powered automated assessment platform, that together provide a more engaging learning experience for students. In our experience, we have been able to teach increasingly more advanced functional programming concepts while improving student engagement.The authors would like to thank the precursors of the 20-year functional programming culture and FPro unit at our university, and all the instructors and TAs that have been involved in the PLab unit throughout the years. This work is financed by the ERDFs European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Programme within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006961, and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT s Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia as part of project UID/EEA/50014/2013

Mass media and public services : the effects of radio access on public education in Benin

Does radio access improve public service provision? And if so, does it do so by increasing government accountability to citizens, or by persuading households to take advantage of publicly-provided services? Prior research has argued that citizens with greater access to mass media receive greater benefits from targeted government welfare programs, but has not addressed these questions for public services such as in education and health. Using unique data from Benin, this paper finds that literacy rates among school children are higher in villages exposed to signals from a larger number of community radio stations. The effect is identified based on a"natural experiment"in the northern communes of Benin where within-commune variation in village access to radio stations is exogenous to observed and unobserved village characteristics. In contrast to prior research, the authors find that this media effect does not operate through government accountability: government inputs into village schools and household knowledge of government education policies are no different in villages with greater access to community radio. Instead, households with greater access are more likely to make financial investments in the education of their children.Education For All,Population Policies,Social Accountability,E-Business,Disability

Preparing students for the software industry new demands

A solid preparation in terms of soft skills and state- of-the-art technical skills in Software Engineering (SE) is a goal for the academy. It also contributes to reducing the gap between Software Engineering education and the software industry's new demands. Generally, in computer science or computer engineering courses, there are separate subjects to teach requirements engineering, analysis, design, coding, or validation. However, integrating all these subjects usually requires experience in developing a complete project. This article describes aspects of an active and collaborative learning approach involving academia and industry actors. The approach presented in this article involved staff from a software company in collaboration with staff from an academic institution. It resulted in a student being involved in an entire software development project. The student was involved in an agile team of faculty and Information Technology (IT) professionals. The Scrum agile framework was followed, and the product was developed using a Low-code development platform. This article presents the approach, details of the project design and implementation, results achieved, lessons learned, and guidelines for the future. The results show that this agile, full-stack approach allows students to develop cutting- edge technical and non-technical skills.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio