Student success in mastering basic programming skills is not as successful as would be expected and at the same time number of students enrolling in Computer Science is decreasing almost worldwide. The Codewitz projec...
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(纸本)9789549641387
Student success in mastering basic programming skills is not as successful as would be expected and at the same time number of students enrolling in Computer Science is decreasing almost worldwide. The Codewitz project is developing and producing interactive web-based learning objects in order to help students and teachers in entry level programming courses. The learning objects are made available via an online material bank (data base) on the Internet at ***. To prepare the projects a need analysis was conducted using an online questionnaire for data collection. The results from the survey will be used to guide Codewitz/Minerva partners in their work to develop the most needed learning objects. Teachers or their respective educational institutions can become partners in Codewitz and download learning objects. All partners can develop their own learning objects and place them in the database and thereby becoming part of the development process of Codewitz.
The ability to problem solve is one of the key skills that a computing student requires in order to learn to program. Although students recruited to the more technically challenging Computer Science degree will have h...
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The ability to problem solve is one of the key skills that a computing student requires in order to learn to program. Although students recruited to the more technically challenging Computer Science degree will have higher mathematical skills at secondary level, students recruited to the Information Technology degree usually have considerably less mathematical ability. This paper reflects upon the fundamental techniques that Liverpool Hope University has adopted to assist in the learning of programming for entry level students on an undergraduate level degree in Computer Science and Information Technology. It examines the key principles of design, development and practice and how the teaching incorporates these principles into the first year courses. It presents a set of strategies developed at Liverpool Hope University over several years which have been successful in promoting programming as an interesting and worthwhile discipline. The development of bespoke software and customised text books to guide teaching and learning is discussed, as is students’ response, via a questionnaire, to these methods of learning programming.
At the University of Worcester we are continually striving to find new approaches to the learning and teaching of programming, to improve the quality of learning and the student experience. Over the past three years w...
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At the University of Worcester we are continually striving to find new approaches to the learning and teaching of programming, to improve the quality of learning and the student experience. Over the past three years we have used the contexts of robotics, computer games, and most recently a study of Abstract Art to this end. This paper discusses our motivation for using Abstract Art as a context, details our principles and methodology, and reports on an evaluation of the student experience. Our basic tenet is that one can view the works of artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Malevich as Object-Oriented (OO) constructions. Discussion of these works can therefore be used to introduce OO principles, to explore the meaning of classes, methods and attributes and finally to synthesize new works of art through Java code. This research has been conducted during delivery of an “Advanced OOP (Java)” programming module at final-year Undergraduate level, and during a Masters’ OO-programming (Java) module. This allows a comparative evaluation of novice and experienced programmers’ learning. In this paper, we identify several instructional factors which emerge from our approach, and reflect upon the associated pedagogy. A Catalogue of ArtApplets is provided at the associated web-site.
The ability to solve problems is one of the key skills that computing students require in order to learn programming. However they find this a challenge. The Computer Science Department at Liverpool Hope recruits stud...
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The ability to solve problems is one of the key skills that computing students require in order to learn programming. However they find this a challenge. The Computer Science Department at Liverpool Hope recruits students to two programmes, BSc. Information Technology and BSc Computing. Both programmes have used bespoke software and text books to guide the teaching and learning of programming. This paper examines how innovative technologies such as the use of robotics can facilitate the students’ understanding and application of problem solving and programming. It discusses and builds on previous initiatives undertaken at Liverpool Hope.
This study examines the motivation of a cohort of first year computing students and the effects on their engagement as they progress through the revised delivery of an introductory programming unit. The purpose behind...
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This study examines the motivation of a cohort of first year computing students and the effects on their engagement as they progress through the revised delivery of an introductory programming unit. The purpose behind the redesign of the delivery of the unit was to maintain student engagement by ensuring that each student was able to assume responsibility for all their work, irrespective of their previous experience. One hoped-for consequence was the avoidance of the bi-modal results profile experienced in previous years. The level of engagement was measured in terms of the numbers of students submitting assignments, given that not all the assignments needed to be attempted to obtain a pass mark for the coursework component of the unit. A survey was conducted at the outset, at which it became clear that a substantial minority of the students were not particularly interested in programming. For these students the motivation was to pass the unit. The number of students expressing either some or considerable interest in programming in the survey almost directly matched the number completing a final, optional assignment. Student surveys and the lack of a bi-modal distribution in the results indicated that the revised delivery programme maintained the general level of motivation and engagement within the group throughout the academic year.
This paper reports on a continuing study into teaching programming to adult novice students. As part of the study we aim to find students’ pattern of behavior when they are programming in Java. In a broader perspecti...
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This paper reports on a continuing study into teaching programming to adult novice students. As part of the study we aim to find students’ pattern of behavior when they are programming in Java. In a broader perspective, we are interested in improving the students’ ability to write programming. By patterns of behavior, we mean finding the frequently made compiler errors and the pattern of debugging. We claim that incorporating students’ most common errors in a form of debugging exercise will improve their ability to program.
This paper argues that automated assessment systems can be useful for both students and educators provided that its results correspond well with human markers. Thus, evaluating such a system is crucial. We present an ...
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This paper argues that automated assessment systems can be useful for both students and educators provided that its results correspond well with human markers. Thus, evaluating such a system is crucial. We present an evaluation framework and show why it can be useful for both producers and consumers of automated assessment. The framework builds on previous work to analyse Latent Semantic Analysis- (LSA) based systems, a particular type of automated assessment, that produced a research taxonomy that could help developers publish their results in a format that is comprehensive, relatively compact, and useful to other researchers. The paper contends that, in order to see a complete picture of an automated assessment system, certain pieces must be emphasised. It presents the framework as a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces join together to form the whole picture and provides an example of the utility of the framework by presenting some empirical results from our assessment system that marks questions about html. Finally, the paper suggests that the framework is not limited to LSA-based systems. With slight modifications, it can be applied to any automated assessment system.
The final assessment of a course must reflect its goals and contents. An important goal of our introductory programming course is that the students learn a systematic approach for the development of computer programs....
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The final assessment of a course must reflect its goals and contents. An important goal of our introductory programming course is that the students learn a systematic approach for the development of computer programs. Having the programming process a as learning objective naturally raises the question how to include this in assessments. Traditional assessments (e.g. oral, written, or multiple choice) are unsuitable to test the programming *** describe and evaluate a practical lab examination that assesses the students’ programming process as well as the developed programs. The evaluation is performed in three ways: by analyzing the results of four lab examinations (with more than 1100 students), by semi-structured individual interviews with representatives of the involved persons (students, teaching assistants (TAs), lecturer, and examiner) and by an experiment to evaluate the impact of the assignment text on the programming *** result of the evaluation is encouraging and indicates the value of alignment and strong conformity between goal, content and assessment of the introductory programming course.
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