Search results for "ta516"
showing 10 items of 614 documents
Revisiting rainfall to explore exam questions and performance on CS1
2015
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…
Teaching programming by emphasizing self-direction: How did students react to the active role required of them?
2013
Lecturing is known to be a controversial form of teaching. With massed classrooms, in particular, it tends to constrain the active participation of students. One of the remedies applied to programming education is to use technology that can vitalize interaction in the classroom, while another is to base teaching increasingly on programming activities. In this article, we present the first results of an exploratory study, in which we teach programming without lectures, exams, or grades, by heavily emphasizing programming activity, and, in a pedagogical sense, student self-direction. This article investigates how students reacted to the active role required of them and what issues emerged in …
Co-evolution between Trust in Teachers and Higher Education Enabled by ICT Advancement – A Suggestion to ICT Growing Economies
2016
In light of the increasing significance of trust-based higher education towards digitally-rich learning environments, co-evolution dynamism between trust in teachers and higher education enabled by ICT advancement was analyzed. Using the rate of trust in teachers for good education in the Global Teacher Status Index, together with statistics on higher education level and ICT advancement, an empirical numerical analysis of 20 countries was attempted. It was identified that while ICT advanced countries have constructed a co-evolution between ICT, higher education and trust, ICT growing countries have not succeeded due to a vicious cycle between ICT and trust. Finland’s educational success can…
Open-ended projects opened up — aspects of openness
2017
Abstract—One of the most important areas of competence for professional engineers is the ability to function well in project work, in particular they need to be able to efficiently solve open-ended problems in different collaborative settings. The development of this ability is however not prominent in engineering education despite numerous authors suggesting openended problems as a pedagogical tool to promote development of collaborative problem solving competence by including elements of group or project work in courses. In our own long experience of using open-ended problems in collaborative student projects, we have identified a lack of systematic progression in learning outcomes and sk…
Open Resources as the Educational Basis for a Bachelor-level Project-Based Course
2015
This article presents an innovation-based course concept for project-based learning. In this course, student groups are asked to ideate and implement a software product based on Open Data and Open API releases. By emphasizing studentsâ own product ideation, the course requires and enhances self-directed learning skills and prompts the students to see the unlimited possibilities in becoming and being a practitioner of the computing discipline. Relatedly, the course provides a tool to improve student self-efficacy, as the students, coached through challenges, come to know that they are able to produce software using various open interfaces.
Understanding Social OER Environments—A Quantitative Study on Factors Influencing the Motivation to Share and Collaborate
2014
Social software environments are increasingly used for open education: teachers and learners share and collaborate in these environments. While there are various possibilities for the inclusion of such social functionalities for OER, many organizational, individual and technological challenges can hinder the motivation of teachers to share and collaborate in these environments. Current research cannot explain what barriers teachers face in social OER environments and how those challenges influence their motivation to engage in such environments. An exploratory factor analysis was used in the context of schools and higher education institutions to investigate the possible barriers to engagin…
Issues in e-learning quality assurance
2011
As a decisive factor, the future of any discipline rests on quality, and e-learning is no exception. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, the contribution from various fields such as education, technology, and economy are needed to achieve quality, thereby creating rich learning experience. Undertaking such a task is challenging according to Pawlowski and Ehler (2006) because "it is necessary to find a valid perspective and definition of quality. This requires an answer to the question for which processes of educational scenario quality development has to be carried out, which quality and according to which perspective it is defined." Being diverse and situational/context dependent, there s…
Issues with a course that emphasizes self-direction
2013
In this paper, we examine a master's level course that emphasizes self-direction on the part of students. The course is run by weekly group assignments and requires independent work such that only one mandatory classroom session is arranged each week. Our specific research interests are how students responded to the setting of this kind and whether they demonstrated self-direction during the course. We surveyed the students' view of the course, their group work experience, and their study habits, and analyzed the resultant survey data for themes. The results suggest that while the pass rate was considerably high and the course was regarded as well-organized by the students, there were sever…
High school students' perspective to university CS1
2013
This paper presents a qualitative study of a school-university collaborative project where a game-themed CS1 course was offered as-is to high school students. Our specific interest was to explore the students' experiences with the university level course. Our analyses indicate that immediate and regular support was highly important for student performance, as support of this kind could mitigate issues related to students' orientation towards the high workload of the course. Students who showed academic interest were likely to pass, whereas students lacking self-direction or work efficiency were likely to drop out. Both passed and drop-outs found the course to be a good learning experience. …
Activity Theory as a Lens to Identify Challenges in Surgical Skills Training at Hospital Work Environment
2015
In this paper the concepts from activity theory (AT) are applied for identifying the challenges and contradictions emerging in surgical residentâs curriculum based training at hospital. AT is utilised as a lens to identify contradictions that cause disturbances, problems, ruptures, breakdowns, and clashes which emerge while surgical skills training is implemented in a new way at hospital. We especially aim at finding solutions for contradictions which emerge while the new and old working culture are confronted and the workers are required to balance themselves between the patient care demands and workplace learning requirements. We are using the conceptual theoretical approach to describe…