Visual and Textual Programming Languages: A Systematic Review of the Literature

It is well documented, and has been the topic of much research, that Computer Science courses tend to have higher than average drop out rates at third level. This is a problem that needs to be addressed with urgency but also caution. The required number of Computer Science graduates is growing every year but the number of graduates is not meeting this demand and one way that this problem can be alleviated is to encourage students at an early age towards studying Computer Science courses. This paper presents a systematic literature review on the role of visual and textual programming languages when learning to program, particularly as a first programming language. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and quantitatively analysed. This study will give insight into whether or not the current approaches to teaching young learners programming are viable, and examines what we can do to increase the interest and retention of these students as they progress through their education.Comment: 18 pages (including 2 bibliography pages), 3 figure

Computational Thinking in Education: Where does it fit? A systematic literary review

Computational Thinking (CT) has been described as an essential skill which everyone should learn and can therefore include in their skill set. Seymour Papert is credited as concretising Computational Thinking in 1980 but since Wing popularised the term in 2006 and brought it to the international community's attention, more and more research has been conducted on CT in education. The aim of this systematic literary review is to give educators and education researchers an overview of what work has been carried out in the domain, as well as potential gaps and opportunities that still exist. Overall it was found in this review that, although there is a lot of work currently being done around the world in many different educational contexts, the work relating to CT is still in its infancy. Along with the need to create an agreed-upon definition of CT lots of countries are still in the process of, or have not yet started, introducing CT into curriculums in all levels of education. It was also found that Computer Science/Computing, which could be the most obvious place to teach CT, has yet to become a mainstream subject in some countries, although this is improving. Of encouragement to educators is the wealth of tools and resources being developed to help teach CT as well as more and more work relating to curriculum development. For those teachers looking to incorporate CT into their schools or classes then there are bountiful options which include programming, hands-on exercises and more. The need for more detailed lesson plans and curriculum structure however, is something that could be of benefit to teachers

Using an innovative assessment approach on a real-world group based software project

Currently, there is a lack of practical, real-world projects on Computer Science (CS) courses at Maynooth University. Generally CS undergraduate modules are composed of 24 hours of lectures and 24 hours of labs where students learn theoretical concepts in the lectures and apply their understanding to practical lab-based exercises. The problem with this approach is that students do not gain any awareness of, or learn how to solve tasks that they are likely to encounter in a real-world industrial setting; nor do they gain experience of working as part of a team even though most software development positions involve team-based work. This paper reports on a web-based development module that incorporated a real-world group based project was re-designed and delivered. The module went well; however, assessing the work fairly was found to be difficult, especially where team members contributed at considerably varying levels was a challenge. Of particular concern was that some hard-working students were penalised by other students poor work and lazy students were rewarded because of more hard-working students work. This action research project will attempt to re-address how to assess this group-based work with a cohort of students. The goal of the research is to implement an innovative assessment structure, using peer-, self-, and co-assessment, for a group based real-world project, that is deemed fair and reasonable and provided a good learning environment

Beacons and Novice Programming Comprehension

Computer Science courses at tertiary level have one of the highest drop-out rates internationally. One of the main issues for this high attrition rate is often seen as CS1, the first Computer Science module usually encountered by students, which has a strong emphasis on computer programming. In order to aid students in the steep learning curve associated with programming, many different techniques have been utilised, to a varied degree of success. This paper aims to discover if particular lines of programming code exist that can help readers easily identify its functionality - referred to as a “beacon”. In a program containing a sort function, for example, advanced programmers might observe the swap code inside a loop and comprehend that it is a sorting algorithm, and therefore a beacon, without much further examination. This paper details the first phase of a study examining the presence of beacons in CS1 standard Java code using eye-tracking technology. In particular this paper will focus on the collection of data from non-novice programmers to determine whether or not beacons can be detected. Participants in this study were presented with basic Java programs and were asked to determine, from a list of possible options, what output was correct. Data was collected using an eye-tracking devices during a phase of experimentation and this data was subsequently analysed. From the analysis we were able to detect some beacons did exist in the code. In the future, some method of displaying these beacons could potentially be implemented as a form of intervention to aid students within the initial stages of learning a programming language

The Impact of the theoretical properties of the Logistic Function on the generation of optically detectable watermarks

A digital watermark is a visible, or preferably invisible, identification code that is permanently embedded in digital media, to prove owner authentication and provide protection for security or defence documents.In this paper, we present an approach for the generation of watermarks using a logistic chaotic function. Using this function in conjunction with seed management, it is possible to generate chaotic sequences that may be used to create highpass or lowpass digital watermarks. A slight change in the initial conditions will quickly lead to a significant change in the subsequent states of the system, and thus will generate substantially different watermarks. This technique has been shown to offer an added security advantage over the more traditionally generated watermarks created from pseudorandom sequences, in that only the function seed needs to be stored. We have previously presented a study where an optical correlator was suitable for the detection of chaotically generated watermarks.We have also studied the impact of shot noise present in an optical detector for watermarks generated using the logistic function. The logistic function presented in this paper is ill-defined for certained seed values and has not been fully investigated for the purpose of watermark generation. We consider the impact of the theoretical properties of the logistic function on watermark generation and their highpass and lowpass properties, which when embedded in digital media, are suitable for optical detection

A study on alternative strategies for sharing lecture notes using a VLE to promote in-class participation

The use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) has become popular over the last ten years at third level institutions. At the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) the Moodle VLE is used to disseminate lecture notes, share course related resources, perform assessment, and provide a means for online communication. This paper is interested in how to effectively use a VLE to disseminate lecture notes. At NUIM lectures notes are typically posted on Moodle before a lecture (for example, all notes posted at the start of the semester or several days before an upcoming lecture etc.) or after a lecture with lecturers having a personal preference for a particular method. In this paper a pilot study on the dissemination of lectures notes through Moodle to a large first year undergraduate class is described in this paper. In previous years student disengagement in this class has been an issue. As such two different approaches were trialed. In the first approach, a summary set of lecture notes to be covered at the next lecture were made available four days in advance. The summary was a one-page document containing at most six slides of the most important material in the lecture. The students were encouraged to read the notes in advance. It was hoped that this would lead to more active participation by the students as they had time to assimilate the material prior to the lecture. In the second approach the students were informed in advance that an in-class assessment would be carried out based on the summary. In both instances a full set of notes were made available on Moodle after the lecture. An overview of the findings of this pilot is presented, including data on student participation during both approaches. In addition, a critique of the potential effects on student results is provided and recommendations based on the findings are discussed

Optical and Digital Technique for Watermark Detection

A digital watermark is a visible, or preferably invisible, identification code that is permanently embedded in some digital data to prove owner authentication and provide protection of that document. In this paper we utilize a watermark generation technique based on the use of chaotic functions and the motivation for using these functions is presented. The technique used for watermark embedding is also described, together with a watermark detection scheme based on an optical Matched Filter correlator. We provide results of optical simulations of the watermark detection scheme and show that correlation-based detection is an excellent method for detecting chaotically-generated watermarks embedded in the Fourier domain using multiplicative embedding.We also show that it is possible to detect chaotically-generated watermarks in images that have been subjected to noise

Beacons and Novice Programming Comprehension

Computer Science courses at tertiary level have one of the highest drop-out rates internationally. One of the main issues for this high attrition rate is often seen as CS1, the first Computer Science module usually encountered by students, which has a strong emphasis on computer programming. In order to aid students in the steep learning curve associated with programming, many different techniques have been utilised, to a varied degree of success. This paper aims to discover if particular lines of programming code exist that can help readers easily identify its functionality - referred to as a “beacon”. In a program containing a sort function, for example, advanced programmers might observe the swap code inside a loop and comprehend that it is a sorting algorithm, and therefore a beacon, without much further examination. This paper details the first phase of a study examining the presence of beacons in CS1 standard Java code using eye-tracking technology. In particular this paper will focus on the collection of data from non-novice programmers to determine whether or not beacons can be detected. Participants in this study were presented with basic Java programs and were asked to determine, from a list of possible options, what output was correct. Data was collected using an eye-tracking devices during a phase of experimentation and this data was subsequently analysed. From the analysis we were able to detect some beacons did exist in the code. In the future, some method of displaying these beacons could potentially be implemented as a form of intervention to aid students within the initial stages of learning a programming language

Developing a Computational Thinking Test using Bebras problems

Assessment is one of the major factors to consider when developing a new course or program of study. When developing a course to teach Computer Science there are many forms this could take, one of which is linked to Computational Thinking. Whilst developing Computer Science to Go (CS2Go), an introductory course aimed at secondary school students, we have developed a Computational Thinking test based on the problems developed for the international Bebras Challenge. This paper will describe the content and development of the course, as well as some analysis on results from a year-long study with secondary school students and first-year undergraduate students. We believe that, based on our analysis and previous research in the field, that our assessment, based on pre-exisiting Bebras problems, has the potential to offer educators another way of testing this increasingly discussed skill, Computational Thinking

Generation and Detection of Watermarks Derived from Chaotic Functions

A digital watermark is a visible, or preferably invisible, identification code that is permanently embedded in digital media, to prove owner authentication thereby providing a level of document protection. In this paper, we review several approaches for the generation of watermarks using chaotic functions, and in particular, the logistic chaotic function. Using this function, in conjunction with seed management, it is to generate chaotic sequences that may be used to create highpass or lowpass digital watermarks.A slight change in the initial conditions will quickly lead to a significant change in the subsequent states of the system, and thus will generate substantially different watermarks. This technique has been shown to offer an added security advantage over tha more traditionally generated watermarks created from pseudorandom sequences, in that only the function seed needs to be stored. It also has the advantage that , through examination of the theoretical properties of the function, it is possible to choose seeds that lead to robust, lowpass watermarks. We review various detection techniques including correlation and statistical methods, and present an analysis of the impact of noise present in a model optical detector. The logistic function presented in this paper is ill defined for certain seed values and has not been fully investigated for the purpose of watermark generation. We consider the impact of the theoretical properties of the logistic function for several chaos-based watermark generation techniques, in particular, their highpass and low pass properties, which when embedded in digital media, are suitable for correlation and statistical based detection methods