Less is More! Preliminary Evaluation of Multi-Functional Document-Based Online Learning Environment

This work-in-progress paper in innovative practice category presents and evaluates a multi-functional document-based learning management system, TIM (The Interactive Material). This system is developed with the goal of integrating a rich set of features seamlessly into teachers’ every-day pedagogical and disciplinary needs. The aim is that a single system (“Less”) would provide all technological solutions necessary for online teaching and learning (“More”), hence the punchline “Less is More!” We illustrate the system and evaluate it based on feedback from teachers. This preliminary evaluation focuses on how teachers reacted to the multi-functional system and is discussed in the context of T…

Understanding differences among coding club students

Scholars and instructors have been carrying out a multitude of actions to increase students' interest in computer science during the past years. Still, there is a need for knowledge on how these attempts develop student interest. In this qualitative study, we construct illustrative categories out of students who have attended our K-12 coding club and game programming summer course activities. We found four categories: Inactivity, Lack of self-direction, Experimenting, and Professionalism. We also briefly project this abstraction onto a four-phase model of interest development.

Ohjelmointi 1 : C#

Ohjelmointi 1 : jotta tietokoneisiin voitaisiin luottaa myös tulevaisuudessa : versio 1.5 07.09.2010

A multi-componential methodology for exploring emotions in learning

Studies on emotions in learning are often based on interviews conducted after the learning. Therefore, these do not capture the multi-componential nature of emotions and how emotions are related to the process of learning. We see emotions as dimensional and multi-componential responses to a personally meaningful events and situation. In this methodologically frontline study we developed a multi-componential methodology, which provides complementary information about emotions during learning. In this study, by using a within subject design of one person, we focused on emotions during the professional identity learning. In a laboratory setting, the subject was shown personally meaningful vide…

Five Years of Game Programming Outreach : Understanding Student Differences

This paper presents lessons learned from five years of teaching a five-day game design and programming outreach course. The course was offered in summer time and targeted at middle and high school students. In total, 462 youngsters have taken part in 21 course instances. We describe our course concept, and discuss our successes and challenges. In particular, we focus on understanding our student populations by presenting descriptives and statistics of the events, and performing a statistical cluster analysis based on pre- and post-surveys. The cluster analysis was complemented with an analysis of the qualitative data, also originating from the surveys. Taken together, students could be clas…

Towards Computer-based Exams in CS1

Even though IDEs are often a central tool when learning to program in CS1, many teachers still lean on paper-based exams. In this study, we examine the “test mode effect” in CS1 exams using the Rainfall problem. The test mode was two-phased. Half of the participants started working on the problem with pen and paper, while the other half had access to an IDE. After submitting their solution, all students could rework their solution on an IDE. The experiment was repeated twice during subsequent course instances. The results were mixed. From the marking perspective, there was no statistically significant difference resulting from the mode. However, the students starting with the paper-based pa…

Rinnakkaislaskenta osittaisdifferentiaaliyhtälöiden numeerisessa ratkaisemisessa

K-12 game programming course concept using textual programming

Several programming environments have been constructed to facilitate novice programming at K-12 and CS0/CS1 levels. The environments can be roughly divided into those using visual or textual programming. This paper presents a K-12 game programming course concept based on textual programming. The concept is based on an easy-to-use C# library, called Jypeli, built on top of Microsoft XNA Framework. The library tries to maintain advantages of visual programming and avoid challenges of textual programming. In particular, the library helps beginners to program their first games in a short period of time and without a heavy syntactic load. The course concept and an initial evaluation consisting o…

A multi-componential methodology for exploring emotions in learning : using self-reports, behaviour registration, and physiological indicators as complementary data

Studies on emotions in learning are often based on interviews conducted after the learning. These do not capture the multi-componential nature of emotions, nor how emotions are related to the processes of learning. We see emotions as dimensional, multi-componential responses to personally meaningful events and situations. In this methodologically advanced pilot study we developed a multi-componential methodology, capable of providing complementary information on emotions in professional learning. For this purpose, we used a within-subject design applied to a single individual, with a focus on emotions during professional learning. Within a laboratory setting, the subject was shown personall…

Digital Education For All: Multi-University Study of Increasing Competent Student Admissions at Scale

An indubitable way to put learning at scale in practice is to implement Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. When a wide-enough portfolio of them is available, new applications arise. For instance, university admissions in Finland, where this study was conducted, have traditionally been based on students' grades in high school studies, an entrance examination, or a combination of both. A minority of students have been accepted through an open university admission path where students can get a study right if they complete enough university course credits with a high enough grade in a given time frame. In this work, we report results from a multi-university project in which the open univers…

Ohjelmointi 2

Life two years after a game programming course: longitudinal viewpoints on K-12 outreach

In our faculty we have run week-long K-12 game programming courses now for three summers. In this paper we investigate what programming-related activities students do after they take a course, and what factors in the students' background relate to post-course programming. We also investigate a possible change in the students' interest towards higher education science studies. We find that most students continue programming after the course and that their interest towards science studies keeps increasing. In student background we observed some indicative trends, but did not find reliable explaining factors related to post-course programming or increased interest towards science studies.

What Students Think About Game-Themed CS1

There has been rising academic interest in including computer game programming in CS1 curriculum during the past years, and many experience reports exist on the topic. Still, there is a need for knowledge on student reception, that is, how the students themselves view the game theme on a CS1 course. In this paper we review our CS1 course feedback from the years 2008–2013, of which three first years were carried out without games, while the latter three years part of our weekly assignments, plus a bigger course assignment, have been “game-themed”. We found that over 90 % found contextualization through games fun, motivating or rewarding in some other way. Less than 10%of the respondents have…

CSI with games and an emphasis on TDD and unit testing

Incorporating teacher-student dialogue into digital course material : Usage patterns and first experiences

This work-in-progress research investigates teacher-student communication via Learning Management Systems (LMS) in highly populated courses. An LMS called TIM (The Interactive Material) includes a specific commenting technology that attempts to make teacher-student dialog effortless. The research goal is to explore students’ willingness to use the technology and identify patterns of usage. To these ends, a survey with both Likert and open-ended questions was issued to CS1 and CS2 students. A favorable student evaluation was observed while several critical viewpoints that inform technology development were revealed. We noticed that besides appreciating the possibility of making comments, man…

Paper-based vs computer-based exams in CS1

In this study, we examine the "test mode effect" in CS1 exam using the Rainfall problem. The participants started working with pen and paper, after which they had access to a computer, and they could rework their solution with a help of a test suite developed by the authors. In the computer- based phase many students were able to fix the errors that they had committed during the paper-based phase. These errors included well-known corner cases, such as empty array or division by zero.

Modelling Without a Modelling Language

Developments in computer hardware and programming languages, in this case C++, have made it feasible to write models of concurrent systems under verification in the programming language, instead of some established modelling language such as Promela. While this does not reduce the usefulness of modelling languages, it offers new possibilities that may be advantageous, for instance, when teaching state space ideas to newcomers or when experimenting with new scientific ideas. In earlier work, we were able to express everything else fairly naturally in C++, except the set of transitions. The present study uses C++ lambda functions to represent naturally transitions that consist of a tail state…

Lipschitz classes and the Hardy-Littlewood property

We study the geometry of plane domains and the uniform Holder continuity properties of analytic functions.

Research has noticed that imparting TDD-like testing to an early computing curriculum is challenging because it increases technical and cognitive load for the students. This paper addresses the challenge with a software-based solution constructed to facilitate the process of writing tests. The solution allows using a compact while efficient syntax for formulating tests, writing tests into JavaDoc comments, thus close to the source code that implements intended functionalities, and automates the generation of actual test code. The constructed solution -- the ComTest tool -- has now been used in four introductory level programming course offerings. The paper presents the tool and concludes wi…

Revisiting rainfall to explore exam questions and performance on CS1

The Rainfall problem comprises small tasks that have been used to investigate student performance in introductory programming. We conducted several kinds of analyses to inform our understandings of student performance in CS1 relating to this problem. We analyzed implementation approaches and program errors, as in related studies, and also explored the role of test writing vis-a-vis the most common student error. Finally, using correlation analyses and manual inspection of the exam answers, we studied how well the Rainfall problem served as an exam question. The students' implementation choices reflected their familiarity with particular loop constructs, while the single most common error co…

Exploring students’ identity development from the perspective of study difficulties

This work-in-progress paper in research category reports preliminary findings on how students taking introductory computing courses develop identity from the perspective of study difficulties. The motivation was that students identified lack of meaning and prospects (cf. identity) as a study difficulty in a previous qualitative study. The present study further explores this finding by issuing both an identity development and a self-efficacy scale to a larger first-year student cohort. The aim is to characterize the study cohort by the aspects included in the identity development scale, and thereby increase understandings of students’ challenges. Moreover, a correlation analysis between iden…