The question of how to teach classical, rule-based programming has been driving much of the computing education research since the 1950s. In the K--12 (school) context, a consensus has emerged over time on the paradigmatic elements of computing education,...

Teaching the principles of how digital technologies work at the K-5 level is underexplored. We created six model lessons for children covering this topic as part of the newly updated Czech national computing curriculum. Here, we introduce these lessons. ...

Motivation. Many people interested in learning a programming language choose online courses to develop their skills. The concept of variables is one of the most foundational ones to learn, but can be hard to grasp for novices. Variables are researched, ...

When trying to understand student success in computer science, much of the attention has been focused on CS1, leaving follow-up courses such as CS2 less researched. Prior studies of CS2 have often taken a deductive approach by focusing on predetermined ...

Similarity checking is a common approach for detecting cheating in programming courses. A known limitation is high rates of similar pairs for programs lacking variability in possible solutions, especially for small programs. We experienced this issue in ...

Knowledge of programming and computing is becoming increasingly valuable in today's world, and thus it is crucial that students from all backgrounds have the opportunity to learn. As the teaching of computing at high-school becomes more common, there is ...

Regular expressions (regex) are a text processing method widely used in data analysis, web scraping, and input validation. However, students find regular expressions difficult to create since they use a terse language of characters. Parsons problems can ...

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have led to the development of large language models (LLMs), which are able to generate text, images, and source code based on prompts provided by humans. In this paper, we explore the capabilities of an LLM - ...

Broadening participation in computer science has been widely studied, creating many different techniques to attract, motivate, and engage students. A common meta-strategy is to use an outside domain as a hook, using the concepts in that domain to teach ...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between student experiences and transactional distance in a 12 week online undergraduate Python programming course. Transactional distance is defined as the psychological and communication space between ...

The assessment of source code in university education is a central and important task for lecturers of programming courses. In doing so, educators are confronted with growing numbers of students having increasingly diverse prerequisites, a shortage of ...

Instructors often grant students extensions or grace days to relax deadline constraints. However, researchers have yet to investigate the value of time extensions in identifying students' abilities and why students use them in computing education. Our ...

Live coding---a pedagogical technique in which an instructor plans, writes, and executes code in front of a class---is generally considered a best practice when teaching programming. However, only a few studies have evaluated the effect of live coding on ...

Prior studies in multilingual computing education have shown that many non-native English speakers (NNES) in India struggle with introductory programming courses as they learn both a programming language (e.g., Java) and a natural language (e.g., English)...

Designing a proper exam that accurately evaluates students' knowledge and skills is one of the important tasks of every teacher. The format of the exams affects the way students learn throughout the course, and a well-designed exam can enhance meaningful ...

Q&A forums are widely used in large classes to provide scalable support. In addition to offering students a space to ask questions, these forums aim to create a community and promote engagement. Prior literature suggests that the way students participate ...

Teaching students to develop code of good quality is important. Refactoring -- rewriting a program into a semantically equivalent program of better quality -- is a common technique to improve code quality. It is therefore relevant for students to learn ...

Software and IT infrastructure keeps changing the way we live and work, but not necessarily for the better for all of us. Considering the implications of software on our society, and the industry's expectations towards computing graduates, it appears ...

Scratch is a hugely popular block-based programming environment that is often used in educational settings, and has therefore recently also become a focus for research on programming education. Scratch provides dedicated teacher accounts that make it ...

In college-level introductory computer science courses, the programming ability of students is often evaluated using pseudocode responses to prompts. However, this does not necessarily reflect modern programming practice in industry and academia, where ...