Reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices: an eye-tracking study

Due to the character of programming languages, reading ability may have more impact on learning to program than on learning in other subjects. This paper describes an exploratory study of the relationship between reading skills, as perceived through eye tracking, and the ability to program. An empirical investigation into this relationship determined that students with inadequate reading skills are at risk of failing at introductory programming. As an explanation for the effect of reading ability on learning to program, we argue that a programming language is a special high-level written language and that using it requires high levels of comprehension, inferencing, selective attention, organising and reflecting. As a result, a student’s reading ability will have a considerable effect on learning to program. Lack of reading skills may therefore be a factor that affect students’ ability to learn to program. Eye tracking can expose reading skills and, therefore, be used to identify at-risk introductory programming students. The practical contribution of this research is the demonstration of how eye tracking can reveal reading problems among programming students. We relate these reading problems to their programming performance, providing a theoretical account of the connection. The results suggest that efforts to improve reading skills could have a positive impact on learning to program

It graduates’ first year of employment experiences and recommendations for the curriculum design

Employment issues in South Africa (SA) are a significant problem. Ongoing discussions in SA revolve around the employability challenges facing South African graduates, particularly in the Information Technology (IT) sector. IT graduates’ skill sets and employability status as well as the validity of the IT curriculum meeting industry needs have been questioned. A descriptive case study on graduates from an accredited, private higher education institution in SA using questionnaires and interviews was done to understand the experiences of employers, employed graduates and recruitment personnel upon employing the graduates, using qualitative analysis. This study investigated, determined and confirmed recommendations to adapt the institution’s curriculum to improve the productivity of their IT graduates upon employment, which may be of value for other higher education institutions offering IT training.Institute for Science and Technology Education (ISTE

A New Approach to Assessing End-User Computing

The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at UNISA has adopted a new method of assessing students who has registered for End-User Computing (EUC). UNISA is a distance-education university offering tuition to students world-wide. A student who now registers for EUC with UNISA, in effect registers for the International Computer Driving Licence (ICDL). This requires the student to do 7 tests on computer throughout the course of the year, instead of writing a written exam at the end of the year. In this paper the reasons why the ICDL approach was adopted, the way it is implemented at UNISA, the advantages offered by the approach and the results obtained to date, are discussed.School of Computin

The role of accessibility and usability in bridging the digital divide for students with disabilities in an e-learning environment

The 2018 conference theme is "Technology for change". This conference theme should stimulate ideas on the way forward in Computer Science and Information Systems given the current debate on decolonisation and Africanisation in the tertiary sector. It may guide the contributions that our academic disciplines can and should make to enrich the knowledge and practice of Information and Communication Technology from an African perspective.School of Computin

Architectural components for the efficient design of mobile agent systems

Over the past eighteen months, there has been a renewed interest in mobile agent technology due to the continued exponential growth of Internet applications, the establishment of open standards for these applications, as well as the semantic web developments. However, the lack of a standardised programming model addressing all aspects of mobile agent systems prevents widespread deployment of the potentially useful technology. The architectural requirements dealing with all aspects of a mobile agent system are not clearly stipulated. As a result, the commercially available mobile agent systems and mobile agent tool kits address different mobile agent issues, and little reuse of available technologies and architectures takes place. The purpose of this paper is to describe an architectural model that identifies the components representing the essential aspects of a mobile agent system. Due to the intensive nature of development, implementation and testing of this model, we describe preliminary work. However, in the meanwhile, there are benefits associated with this preliminary model, namely that it provides a clear understanding of the architectural issues of mobile agent computing, giving novice researchers and practitioners who enters the field for the first time a foundation for making sensible decisions when researching, designing and developing mobile agents. The model is also significant in that it provides a benchmark for researchers and developers to measure the capabilities of mobile agents created by commercially available tool kits.Mobile Agent Systems, Software architecture modelSchool of Computin

Visualization Criteria: supporting knowledge transfer in Incident

Incident Management Systems (IMS) assist in managing resources in order to minimize fatalities and damage. Visual artifacts in an IMS can facilitate knowledge transfer between responders to an incident, however, evidence-based guidance on the design of these visualizations are lacking. The aim of this study is to propose evidence-based knowledge visualization criteria (KVC). Design Science Research (DSR) was the guiding methodology. We abstracted a set of KVC from the academic literature, and then applied said criteria to evaluate a cloud-based prototype IMS. The evaluation included interviews with content experts from the South African Fire Service to establish the relevance of the KVC. The KVC were also used in a heuristic evaluation of the IMS by usability experts. The theoretical contribution of the study is the validated set of KVC based on the triangulation of the findings from the content experts and the usability experts. The study also makes a practical contribution by demonstrating the use of evidencebased visualization criteria in IMS.School of Computin

An Agent-Oriented Framework for Constructing Mobile Agent Systems

Agents and mobile agents hold significant benefits for current trends in computing. Despite some industries actively exploring mobile agent applications the promised deployment has not taken place as expected. Possible incompatibility between the general view of a mobile agent and the diverse definitions of agents has been raised as one of the potential reasons why industry has not yet adopted agent and mobile technology as widely as expected. Developing agent systems requires specialized skills and knowledge in various areas. Accordingly, regardless of a novice mobile agent programmer's computing background, he/she usually has to assimilate new knowledge in order to implement mobile agents. Furthermore, to realise the full potential of mobile agents, they should be implemented according to proper agent programming principles. This paper describes a framework for constructing a mobile agent system that takes agent orientation into account to provide a programming model for novice mobile agent programmers.School of Computin