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

Coherence of Personal Narratives Across the Lifespan: A Multidimensional Model and Coding Method

Personal narratives are integral to autobiographical memory and to identity, with coherent personal narratives being linked to positive developmental outcomes across the lifespan. In this article, we review the theoretical and empirical literature that sets the stage for a new lifespan model of personal narrative coherence. This new model integrates context, chronology, and theme as essential dimensions of personal narrative coherence, each of which relies upon different developmental achievements and has a different developmental trajectory across the lifespan. A multidimensional method of coding narrative coherence (the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme or NaCCS) was derived from the model and is described here. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by its application to 498 narratives that were collected in six laboratories from participants ranging in age from 3 years to adulthood. The value of the model is illustrated further by a discussion of its potential to guide future research on the developmental foundations of narrative coherence and on the benefits of personal narrative coherence for different aspects of psychological functioning

276 BRACE Yourself: CS Education Research Is Coming

Computer science education is a fledgling research discipline. Only recently have CS educators begun to explore important issues and methodologies in computer science teaching. However, without a mature research community or a common theoretical model, it can be difficult to develop a coherent research program. Efforts are duplicated between institutions, projects become mired in methodological problems and experimental rigour is sacrificed. In an effort to combat these problems, Sally Fincher (University of Kent) and Dr Marian Petre (Open University) have developed a method for fostering coordinated research efforts between CS educators from different universities. A group of interested CS educators from various institutions participate in a methodology workshop, followed by a year-long research project where each participant gathers data from his or her own institution, and a second combined workshop for data interpretation and preparation of a research report. The Australasian instantiation of this approach is titled BRACE: Building Research in Australasian Computing Education. The BRACE project currently involves CS Educators from 15 tertiary institutions in New Zealand, Australia and the UK in a study of the determinants of early programming skill. This paper describes Fincher and Petre’s methodology, the content of the current BRACE project, and the group’s goals for the future

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INTRODUCTION The Bachelor of Information Technology at Otago Polytechnic is distinguished from other local IT programs by its focus on practical training and its commitment to individual education. To this end, the BIT emphasises laboratory practicals and places a strict limit on class size. Our practical teaching sessions are limited to 17 students, producing an extremely low student/teacher ratio, and allowing maximum one-on-one interaction between student and tutor. Unfortunately, providing this level of individual attention is not always easy. Different students have different abilities and educational needs. This is particularly true of the BIT's student population, which Joy Gasson ranges from 17-year-old school leavers to middleaged tradesmen training for new careers. Tailoring instruction to accommodate such a wide range of ability, previous experience, learning style and educational goals can be nightmarish. This problem has been especially evident in our computer prog

My Program is Correct But it Doesn't Run: A Preliminary Investigation of Novice Programmers' Problems

In this paper we describe an ongoing study of novice programmers. The aim is to record (as close as possible to) all of the problems encountered by students during the laboratory sessions of our introductory Java programming class. We discuss the tools and methods employed, in particular presenting the list of problem definitions which is used to classify students' problems. Data collected during 2003 are presented and discussed. The results are consistent with trends noted in the literature, and highlight the significance of both fundamental design issues and the procedural aspects of programming. Different problem distributions are observed for high and low performing students. An analysis of individual lab sessions can be useful for refining course materials and teaching practice

Programmed to succeed?: A multi-national, multi-institutional study of introductory programming courses

This paper describes a multi-national, multi-institutional study that investigated introductory programming courses. Student participants were drawn from eleven institutions, mainly in Australasia, during the academic year of 2004. A number of diagnostic tasks were used to explore cognitive, behavioural, and attitudinal factors such as spatial visualisation and reasoning, the ability to articulate strategies for common-place search and design tasks, and attitudes to studying. The results indicate that: a deep approach to learning was positively correlated with mark for the course, while a surface approach was negatively correlated; spatial visualisation skills are correlated with success; a progression of map drawing styles identified in the literature has a significant effect with marks; and increasing measures of richness of articulation of a search strategy are also associated with higher marks. Finally, a qualitative analysis of short interviews identified the qualities that students themselves regarded as important to learn programming well

Do map drawing styles of novice programmers predict success in programming? A multi-national, multi-institutional study

In this paper, we present the results of one aspect of a multinational, multi-institutional study of computer programming students. Specifically, this paper reports on an exploration of relationships between novice programmers' map-drawing styles (landmark, route or survey) and success in a first programming course at tertiary level. Relationships were found between map-drawing style and success of students in introductory programming' courses, but there were mediating factors that resulted in some mixed findings between the countries in which data was collected. The results of this study identify some rich areas for further exploration, and suggests how this line of research might progress