Search results for "computer science education"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Challenges and Confusions in Learning Version Control with Git
2014
Scholars agree on the importance of incorporating use of version control systems (VCSs) into computing curricula, so as to be able to prepare students for today’s distributed and collaborative work places. One of the present-day distributed version control systems (DVCSs) is Git, the system we have used on several courses. In this paper, we report on the challenges for learning and using the system based on a survey data collected from a project-based course and our own teaching experiences during several different kinds of computing courses. The results of this analysis are discussed and recommendations are made. peerReviewed
Factors Affecting Attrition among First Year Computer Science Students: the Case of University of Latvia
2015
<p class="R-AbstractKeywords"><span lang="EN-GB">The purpose of our study was to identify reasons for high dropout of students enrolled in the first year of the computer science study program to make it possible to determine students, who are potentially in risk. Several factors that could affect attrition, as it was originally assumed, were studied: high school grades (admission score), compensative course in high school mathematics, intermediate grades for core courses, prior knowledge of programming. However, the results of our study indicate that none of the studied factors is determinant to identify those students, who are going to abandon their studies, with great precisio…
Identifying Pathways to Computer Science : The Long-Term Impact of Short-Term Game Programming Outreach Interventions
2019
Short-term outreach interventions are conducted to raise young students’ awareness of the computer science (CS) field. Typically, these interventions are targeted at K–12 students, attempting to encourage them to study CS in higher education. This study is based on a series of extra-curricular outreach events that introduced students to the discipline of computing, nurturing creative computational thinking through problem solving and game programming. To assess the long-term impact of this campaign, the participants were contacted and interviewed two to five years after they had attended an outreach event. We studied how participating in the outreach program affected the students’ perceptio…
Computer Programming Aptitude Test as a Tool for Reducing Student Attrition
2015
Submitted to the VTR conference to be held in Rezekne, June 2015
Algorithms and Logic as Programming Primers
2019
To adapt all-immersive digitalization, the Finnish National Curriculum 2014 (FNC-2014) ‘digi-jumps’ by integrating programming into elementary education. However, applying the change to mathematics teachers’ everyday praxis is hindered by a too high-level specification. To elaborate FNC-2014 into more concrete learning targets, we review the computer science syllabi of countries that are well ahead, as well as the education recommendations set by computer science organizations, such as ACM and IEEE. The whole mathematics syllabus should be critically viewed in the light of these recommendations and feedback collected from software professionals and educators. The feedback reveals an imbalan…
On the impact of computer science outreach events on K-12 students
2016
Many countries have begun to adopt computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) into national curricula of compulsory education and upper secondary education. It is argued that learning rigorous CS concepts not only secures a workforce for the future’s digital industries but also benefits all students by improving their problem-solving and logical reasoning skills. However, the popularity of CS as a university major declined in the beginning of the 21st century, resulting in the development of a range of student outreach activities to engage young students in the study of computing. This thesis originated from this need to attract and retain students in the CS field. The focus of thi…
Elementary Math to Close the Digital Skills Gap
2018
All-encompassing digitalization and the digital skills gap pressure the current school system to change. Accordingly, to ’digi-jump’, the Finnish National Curriculum 2014 (FNC-2014) adds programming to K-12 math. However, we claim that the anticipated addition remains too vague and subtle. Instead, we should take into account education recommendations set by computer science organizations, such as ACM, and define clear learning targets for programming. Correspondingly, the whole math syllabus should be critically viewed in the light of these changes and the feedback collected from SW professionals and educators. These findings reveal an imbalance between supply and demand, i.e., what is ove…
Arithmetic, Logic, Syntax and MathCheck
2019
MathCheck is a web-based tool for checking all steps of solutions to mathematics, logic and theoretical computer science problems, instead of checking just the final answers. It can currently deal with seven problem types related to arithmetic, logic, and syntax. Although MathCheck does have some ability to perform symbolic computation, checking is mostly based on testing with many combinations of the values of the variables in question. This introduces a small risk of failure of detection of errors, but also significantly widens the scope of problems that can be dealt with and facilitates providing a concrete counter-example when the student’s solution is incorrect. So MathCheck is primari…