Background and context: We address the question of what computer science students take the discipline to be. How students conceive the discipline can influence whether a student pursues computer science, what particular area within computer science they focus on and whether they persist in the discipline. In this paper, we examine the epistemic…

Background and Context: Self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are critical aspect of learning to program and are predictive of academic success. Early college students often struggle to use these skills, but can improve when given targeted instruction. However, it is not yet clear what skills are best to prioritize. Objective: We seek to create a…

Background and Context: Pair programming is an important approach to fostering students' programming and collaborative learning skills. However, the empirical findings on pair programming are mixed, especially concerning effective instructional design. Objective: The objective of this literature review is to provide lecturers with systematic…

Background and Context: Source code plagiarism is a common occurrence in undergraduate computer science education. Many source code plagiarism detection tools have been proposed to address this problem. However, such tools do not identify plagiarism, nor suggest what assignment submissions are suspicious of plagiarism. Source code plagiarism…

Background and Context: We replicated and expanded on previous work about how well students learn dynamic programming, a difficult topic for students in algorithms class. Their study interviewed a number of students at one university in a single term. We recruited a larger sample size of students, over several terms, in both large public and…

Background and Context: While higher education in Norway intends to ensure students can translate academic learning to real-world settings, a gap persists in computing students' perceptions of their acquired competencies. Objective: This study aims to understand the gap and explore how formative assessment with ePortfolios can help students…

Department chairs play a key role in efforts to diversify higher education, particularly in fields like computer science that face long-standing gender and racial/ethnic gaps. This study considers the role of computer science department chairs in guiding broadening participation efforts and how they make sense of external dynamics that influence…

Background and Context: Collaborative and cooperative learning is important to prepare students for their future work and to increase their learning performance in university courses. Several studies have shown promising results regarding team activities, such as pair programming. However, there is little information on how teamwork is currently…

Background and Context: Productive failure (PF) is a learning paradigm that flips the order of instruction: students work on a problem, then receive a lesson. PF increases learning, but less is known about student emotions and collaboration during PF, particularly in a computer science context. Objective: To provide insight on students' emotions…

Background and context: There were few studies indicating if students' computational thinking (CT) self-efficacy and their CT performance were aligned with each other. Objectives: The study was to investigate if there was a discrepancy between students' CT self-efficacy and their CT performance. Method: Involving 104 non-CS undergraduate students…

Background and Context: Computer Science has traditionally had poor student retention, especially among women. Prior work has found that student attitudes are a key factor to retention, especially with "weedout" courses such as Calculus. Objective: To determine how student attitudes towards CS 1 and Calculus change over active-learning…

Background and context: High school students' interest in computing fields is not always sustained in community college due to a disconnect between institutions. Objective: To understand how cross-sector collaborations can align institutional pathways in computing. Research questions: What cross-sector practices can be used to build a computing…

Background and Context: Research in programming education seems to show that hands-on writing at the keyboard is beneficial for learning, but we lack an explanation of why that is and an underlying theory to anchor that explanation. Objective: The first objective is to lay out a theoretical foundation for understanding the learning situation when…

Background and context: Emotions are ubiquitous in academic settings and affect learning strategies, motivation to persevere, and academic outcomes, however they have not figured prominently in research on learning to program at the university level. Objective: To summarize the current knowledge available on the effect of emotions on students…

Background and Context: Lopez and Lister first presented evidence for a skill hierarchy of code reading, tracing, and writing for introductory programming students. Further support for this hierarchy could help computer science educators sequence course content to best build student programming skill. Objective: This study aims to replicate a…