Concept inventories are standardized assessments that evaluate student understanding of key concepts within academic disciplines. While prevalent across STEM fields, their development lags for advanced computer scienc...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9798400705311
Concept inventories are standardized assessments that evaluate student understanding of key concepts within academic disciplines. While prevalent across STEM fields, their development lags for advanced computerscience topics like dynamic programming (DP)an algorithmic technique that poses significant conceptual challenges for undergraduates. To fill this gap, we developed and validated a Dynamic programming Concept Inventory (DPCI). We detail the iterative process used to formulate multiple-choice questions targeting known student misconceptions about DP concepts identified through prior research studies. We discuss key decisions, tradeoffs, and challenges faced in crafting probing questions to subtly reveal these conceptual misunderstandings. We conducted a preliminary psychometric validation by administering the DPCI to 172 undergraduate CS students finding our questions to be of appropriate difficulty and effectively discriminating between differing levels of student understanding. Taken together, our validated DPCI will enable instructors to accurately assess student mastery of DP. Moreover, our approach for devising a concept inventory for an advanced theoretical computerscience concept can guide future efforts to create assessments for other under-evaluated areas currently lacking coverage.
Universities across the United States have been experiencing an increased demand for com- puter science majors. Adjusting curriculum to meet demand runs the risk of hindering ongoing efforts to broaden participation i...
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Universities across the United States have been experiencing an increased demand for com- puter science majors. Adjusting curriculum to meet demand runs the risk of hindering ongoing efforts to broaden participation in computerscience. To manage growth, and in- crease the representation of women and underrepresented minorities in the field, we must first understand current patterns for participation, and factors that impact access and per- sistence. Universities with common first-year engineering programs present an opportunity for ad- dressing some of the barriers that have traditionally limited access to computerscience to certain groups. In particular, common first-year programs could provide early positive ex- periences with computerprogramming which encourage more students to consider computerscience as a viable major. To better understand how a common first-year engineering program may impact matricula- tion and persistence in computerscience, I conducted studies to identify high-level patterns of participation in computerscience, as well as how students experience programming in- struction in an introductory engineering course. All studies share the same context: a large public research institution with a common first-year engineering program. Results indicate that women are leaving computerscience at all points of the curriculum, contributing to a reduced representation of women earning CS degrees. In contrast, URM and first-generation students have higher representation in the group earning CS degrees than in the group first declaring a CS major.
Motivating students to engage with a course, encouraging positive behavior, and inspiring them to take an active role in their educational process - particularly at the beginning of the course are universal challenges...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9798400705311
Motivating students to engage with a course, encouraging positive behavior, and inspiring them to take an active role in their educational process - particularly at the beginning of the course are universal challenges in education. In this article, we share our experience implementing an early submission incentive policy in a Machine Organization and Assembly Language programming course. This policy encourages students to complete and submit their weekly lab work early in exchange for bonus points. We examine the impact of this positive behavior reinforcement on overall student performance (final grade) and performance in specific components such as exams and programming assignments. Our results, based on data collected over four years and involving more than 1,400 students, indicate that students who participate in early submissions achieve a higher final grade and perform better on other assessments, such as programming assignments.
Worked examples have consistently demonstrated their value in education, serving as the model solutions for solving specific problem types. Past studies indicate that combining worked examples with practice problems i...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783031723148;9783031723155
Worked examples have consistently demonstrated their value in education, serving as the model solutions for solving specific problem types. Past studies indicate that combining worked examples with practice problems is more effective than providing either problems or examples in isolation. Despite these findings, the exploration of the effects of grouping worked examples and problems for programming practice is limited, especially in learning environments designed for practice. This paper compares two content organization approaches in a practice system. The first one is explicitly connecting worked examples and completion problems, allowing students to access them in smaller bundles. The other one is delivering the same set of activities separately but keeping an implicit connection by grouping them under a topic. We examined the effects of these two approaches on student engagement and performance in a semester-long classroom experiment conducted in a CS1 programming course. The results indicate that explicitly connecting worked examples and completion problems increased engagement with the completion problems and supported problem-solving performance by leading to higher success rates and persistence.
Novice programmers face various errors during the learning of a programming language. Most of them need help from instructors since they lack error resolution skills. On the other side, instructors spend a lot of time...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783031630279;9783031630286
Novice programmers face various errors during the learning of a programming language. Most of them need help from instructors since they lack error resolution skills. On the other side, instructors spend a lot of time figuring out students' error causes. Long error detection times result in delayed and failed feedback, leading to a loss of student motivation. To support instructor's fast feedback, a detection method of error cause is needed. Existing detection methods, which are code-based, detect common and specific errors that can be identified by analyzing source code. These methods do not cover the diverse error patterns of novice programmers sufficiently, such as logical defects. To resolve this issue, it may be beneficial to detect rough and correct error causes of diverse error patterns. In this paper, a prediction method of rough error cause is proposed by considering not only source code, but also problem information, execution results, and the cognitive level indicating programming skills. We assume that different programming skills lead to different error patterns, which can help roughly but precisely predict error causes of runtime and logic errors in novice programmers. For performance evaluation, data from two introductory programming courses are used to validate the effectiveness of the cognitive level. Additionally, the usability for fast feedback is validated by comparing the error causes detection times of the instructors in each case.
As in the classical computing realm, quantum programming languages in quantum computing allow one to instruct a quantum computer to perform certain tasks. In the last 25 years, many imperative, functional, and multi-p...
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As in the classical computing realm, quantum programming languages in quantum computing allow one to instruct a quantum computer to perform certain tasks. In the last 25 years, many imperative, functional, and multi-paradigm quantum programming languages with different features and goals have been developed. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has investigated who uses quantum languages, how practitioners learn a quantum language, how experience are practitioners with quantum languages, what is the most used quantum languages, in which context practitioners use quantum languages, what are the challenges faced by quantum practitioners while using quantum languages, are program written with quantum languages tested, and what are quantum practitioners' perspectives on the variety of quantum languages and the potential need for new languages. In this paper, we first conduct a systematic survey to find and collect all quantum languages proposed in the literature and/or by organizations. Secondly, we identify and describe 37 quantum languages. Thirdly, we survey 251 quantum practitioners to answer several research questions about their quantum language usage. Fourthly, we conclude that (i) 58.2% of all practitioners are 25-44 years old, 63.0% have a master's or doctoral degree, and 86.2% have more than five years of experience using classical languages. (ii) 60.6% of practitioners learn quantum languages from the official documentation. (iii) Only 16.3% of practitioners have more than five years of experience with quantum languages. (iv) Qiskit (Python) is the most used quantum language, followed by Cirq (Python) and QDK (Q#). (v) 42.8% use quantum languages for research. (vi) Lack of documentation and usage examples are practitioners' most challenging issues. Practitioners prefer open-source quantum languages with an easy-to-learn syntax (e.g., based on an existing classical language), available documentation and examples, and an active community. (vii) 76.4%
Dependent types provide users with the tools to embody specifications in types, with implementations carrying proofs that the specifications are met. One approach to developing programs in a dependently typed language...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9783031745577;9783031745584
Dependent types provide users with the tools to embody specifications in types, with implementations carrying proofs that the specifications are met. One approach to developing programs in a dependently typed language develops such programs by enriching simply typed programs through a process of refactoring.
computerprogramming is essential nowadays but still challenging to learn due to its invisible thinking. Current programming environments are mostly designed for operating on computers directly to learn concrete progr...
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computerprogramming is essential nowadays but still challenging to learn due to its invisible thinking. Current programming environments are mostly designed for operating on computers directly to learn concrete programming, but this approach lacks the support for clarifying learners' thinking processes. On the other hand, using paper and pens shows usability in developing creative thinking, but it cannot help verify learners' thinking results due to its nature. To benefit from both paper and computers, we developed an interactive programming learning environment consisting of a paper board game, a computer system, and a digitalization mechanism. Learners can use the learning environment to draw down their thinking results and verify them by comparing them with the evaluation on the computer system immediately. Two experiments were conducted to compare this learning environment with paper board games and computerprogramming environments, respectively. The experimental results show that the subjects who learn in our environment can learn to program better than those who learn with the other two. The proposed environment is easy to prepare for learners in a classroom as their first step to programming learning. It can help learners cross over from paper board games for computational thinking to computerprogramming environments.
Teaching computerprogramming language remotely presents particular difficulties due to its requirement for abstract and logical thinking. There is a dearth of research specifically examining the potential factors tha...
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