NOVICE PROGRAMMING STRATEGIES

This paper identifies novice programmer activities and their implications for the programming outcome. We investigate strategies, cognitive processes and behavior within interacting phases of programming: 1) understanding and design, 2) coding, and 3) debugging and testing. We envision that stronger novice programmers behave differently from weaker novice programmers during the programming process. We develop a questionnaire-based tool, the programming strategy questionnaire (PSQ), which we use to identify the activities novices employ during their development of a program, and we link the strategies to learning outcomes. Finally, we discuss how educators can use our findings to improve the education of novice programmers

A case study on engineering faculty design projects

There is an established trend in engineering education to incorporate a design component for preparing students for real life practice. A recent report entitled Educating Engineers for the 21st Century[9] stresses that engineering courses need to adapt to the changing needs of businesses and to place a greater emphasis on real-life problems by working in collaboration with industrial partners. An initial investigation of design projects across four engineering disciplines was carried out to understand the breadth and depth of design projects. This included identifying key characteristics of the design projects, analysis of learning and teaching activities with respect to constructive alignment and investigation of assessment practices in these design projects. This research also examines the type of students’ experiences. This paper ends with a discussion on the implications of these findings for design projects

Evaluation of students’ experiences of developing transferable skills and business skills using a business simulation game

Developing the business and transferable skills of students is a challenge in the higher education environment. The issue is how to simulate a business environment to give students a realistic experience. If it is possible to give a realistic experience, the next challenge is what are the best ways to measure if the students have actually developed their skills? This paper is about introducing a practice by creating an environment for students to develop their transferable and business skills using a computer simulated environment. The research aspect of this paper is about finding or not finding empirical evidence of students’ development of these skills. Finally this research also evaluates the course from students’ point of views based on their experience. The research uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate students’ development of these skills and their experience of the module

Strategies of Novice Programmers

In this paper we study novice programmers’ strategies during different phases of programming. Programming strategies are about cognitive processes that result in the programmers’ code being written from scratch, edited or deleted. The paper presents a questionnaire, which will be used to investigate how and when novice programmers use different strategies and how this affects the quality of the resulting program. We identify the cognitive processes that novice programmers utilise to complete a programming task. These cognitive processes may or may not result in immediate changes in the code. The ultimate purpose of this ongoing research is to contribute to improve the initial programmer education

Fostering Program Comprehension in Novice Programmers - Learning Activities and Learning Trajectories

This working group asserts that Program Comprehension (ProgComp) plays a critical part in the process of writing programs. For example, this paper is written from a basic draft that was edited and revised until it clearly presented our idea. Similarly, a program is written incrementally, with each step tested, debugged and extended until the program achieves its goal. Novice programmers should develop program comprehension skills as they learn to code so that they are able both to read and reason about code created by others, and to reflect on their code when writing, debugging or extending it. To foster such competencies our group identified two main goals: (g1) to collect and define learning activities that explicitly address key components of program comprehension and (g2) to define tentative theoretical learning trajectories that will guide teachers as they select and sequence those learning activities in their CS0/CS1/CS2 or K-12 courses. The WG has completed the first goal and laid down a strong foundation towards the second goal as presented in this report. After a thorough literature review, a detailed description of the Block Model is provided, as this model has been used with a dual purpose, to classify and present an extensive list of ProgComp tasks, and to describe a possible learning trajectory for a complex task, covering different cells of the Block Model matrix. The latter is intended to help instructors to decompose complex tasks and identify which aspects of ProgComp are being fostered

Improving the quality of learning experience through continuous evaluation and innovation

This paper presents a study that explores the experience of distance learning students on a post-graduate degree with a cohort of 300 students. In distance learning, e-learning technologies are prevalent features and one aspect of this research is to investigate the role of these e-learning technologies in promoting learning. The mechanisms by which the course is delivered are through synchronous communication meeting/tutorials for individual module unit tutorials, exam tutorial and laboratory demonstrations. The commitment and resources dedicated both in the design and delivery of the online tutorials. Therefore, this research is about identifying the impact of these tutorials on student learning experience and how such understanding can be used to redesign the manner in which these tutorials are delivered. This research is essentially about improving practice through research and action and therefore the main methodological framework that is used is action research

Evaluation of the safety and immunogenicity of the oral inactivated multivalent enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli vaccine ETVAX in Bangladeshi adults in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase I trial using electrochemiluminescence and ELISA assays for immunogenicity analyses

The safety and immunogenicity of the second generation oral enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) vaccine ETVAX, consisting of inactivated recombinant E. coli strains over-expressing the colonization factors (CFs) CFA/I, CS3, CS5 and CS6 and the heat labile toxoid LCTBA, were evaluated in Bangladeshi volunteers. To enable analysis of antibody responses against multiple vaccine antigens for subsequent use in small sample volumes from children, a sensitive electrochemiluminescence (ECL) assay for analysis of intestine-derived antibody-secreting cell responses using the antibodies in lymphocyte secretions (ALS) assay was established using Meso Scale Discovery technology. Three groups of Bangladeshi adults (n = 15 per group) received two oral doses of ETVAX with or without double mutant LT (dmLT) adjuvant or placebo in the initial part of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, age-descending, dose-escalation trial. CF- and LTB-specific ALS and plasma IgA responses were analyzed by ECL and/or ELISA. ETVAX was safe and well tolerated in the adults. Magnitudes of IgA ALS responses determined by ECL and ELISA correlated well (r = 0.85 to 0.98 for the five primary antigens, P < 0.001) and ECL was selected as the ALS readout method. ALS IgA responses against each of the primary antigens were detected in 87–100% of vaccinees after the first and in 100% after the second vaccine dose. Plasma IgA responses against different CFs and LTB were observed in 62–93% and 100% of vaccinees, respectively. No statistically significant adjuvant effect of dmLT on antibody responses to any antigen was detected, but the overall antigenic breadth of the plasma IgA response tended to favor the adjuvanted vaccine when responses to 4 or more or 5 vaccine antigens were considered. Responses in placebo recipients were infrequent and mainly detected against single antigens. The promising results in adults supported testing ETVAX in descending age groups of children. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02531802