In recent years, massive open online Courses (MOOCs) as an online instruction format have attracted educators' attention in higher education. While there are many news reports and blog entries about MOOCs, evidence-based research is still emerging. Research examining the learners' perspective on taking a MOOC is scarce but very much needed. This…

This paper reports on a series of introductory programming workshops, initially targeting female high school students, which utilised Lego Mindstorms robots. Cognitive load theory (CLT) was applied to the instructional design of the workshops, and a controlled experiment was also conducted investigating aspects of the interface. Results indicated…