The TeachScheme! Project aims to reform three aspects of introductory programming courses in secondary schools. First, we use a design method that asks students to develop programs in a stepwise fashion such that each step produces a well-specified intermediate product. Second, we use an entire series of sublanguages, not just one. Each element of…

Automated techniques for finding plagiarism in student source code submissions have been in use for over 20 years and there are many available engines and services. This paper reviews the literature on the major modern detection engines, providing a comparison of them based upon the metrics and techniques they deploy. Generally the most common and…

The authors conducted ethnographic research to provide deep understanding of the learning environment of a selection of computer science classrooms at a large, research university in the United States. Categories emerging from data analysis included (1) impersonal environment and guarded behavior; and (2) the creation and maintenance of informal…

Sociocultural theories of learning such as Wenger and Lave's situated learning have been suggested as alternatives to cognitive theories of learning like constructivism. This article examines situated learning within the context of computer science (CS) education. Situated learning accurately describes some CS communities like open-source software…

Despite the multiple potential benefits of asking students working on programming tasks to consider human factors, most programming assignments narrowly focus on technical details and requirements. Female students in particular may be attracted to assignments that emphasize human as well as technical factors. To assess how students respond to…

In this paper, we investigate the question of what assessment tools are being used in practice by United States computing programs and what the faculty doing the assessment think of the tools they use. After presenting some background with regard to the design, implementation, and use of assessment, with particular attention to assessment tools,…

The paper presents a study of novice difficulties with range conceptions in loop design. CS2 students were asked to solve four related enumeration tasks, which required various loop boundary specifications. The student solutions varied considerably in conciseness and efficiency. The solution diversity reveals significant differences in range…

Theoretical issues of computer science are traditionally taught in a way that presupposes a solid mathematical background and are usually considered more or less inaccessible for students without this. An effective methodology is described which has been developed for a target group of university students with different backgrounds such as natural…

Realizing the importance of teaching efficiency at early stages of the program of study in computer science (CS) on one hand, and the difficulties encountered when introducing this concept on the other, we advocate a different didactic approach in the introductory CS course (CS1). This paper describes the approach as it is used at the Open…

The paper uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's theories about the relationship between thought, language, and objects of the world to explore the assumption that OO-thinking resembles natural thinking. The paper imports from research in linguistic philosophy to computer science education research. I show how UML class diagrams (i.e., an artificial…

A novel approach to improving instruction in an introductory computing course for freshmen non-computer-science majors is to couple it with a logic course as part of a Learning Community. Research has shown that effective Learning Communities can lead to higher academic achievement, better retention rates, diminished faculty isolation, and…

In educational research, investigators in one field are often ignorant of similar research in other fields. Physics education in particular has undergone dramatic reforms in recent years, all based on insights gained from conducting educational research. Often, pedagogical methods resulting from research in one field can be revised and transferred…

This paper describes an exercise in determining the cognitive difficulty of the assessment tasks in six computing courses within an Information Technology (IT) degree, importing Bloom's taxonomy from the field of educational psychology as an analytical framework. Three of the six courses comprise a Programming stream and three a Data…

The premise of this paper is that computer science has much to offer the endeavor of instructional improvement. Software design processes employed in computer science for developing software can be used for planning instruction and should improve instruction in much the same manner that design processes appear to have improved software. Techniques…

Analyzes the science frameworks of 49 states and the District of Columbia to determine the emphasis given to evolution in these documents at the middle and secondary levels. Collectively, the 50 frameworks emphasized evolution in a manner that suggests that if the public's support for standards-based curricula is a reality, the study of evolution…