Analyzing which skills students develop in introductory programming education is an important question for the computer science education community. These key skills and concepts have been formalized as knowledge components, which are units of knowledge that can be measured by performance on a set of tasks. While knowledge components in other…

Although ample research has focused on computing skill development over a single course or specific programming language, relatively little attention is paid to how computing skills evolve across a program. Our work aims to understand how specific skills develop throughout a progression of CS courses. We use qualitative content analysis to catalog…

Computational Thinking (CT) has evolved as an essential competency for K-12 students, and programming practices are recognized as the key way to facilitate CT development. However, most studies of CT development in middle graders have focused on visual programming, lacking evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of Python programming. Therefore,…

Despite the elevated importance of Data Science in Statistics, there exists limited research investigating how students learn the computing concepts and skills necessary for carrying out data science tasks. Computer Science educators have investigated how students debug their own code and how students reason through foreign code. While these…

Educational technologists and practitioners have made substantial strides in developing affordable digital and tangible resources to support both formal and informal computer science instruction. However, there is a lack of research on practice-based assignments, such as Internet of Things (IoT) projects, that allow undergraduate students to…

The HCS12 microcontroller and DRAGON12-Light Trainer boards are extensively utilized in microprocessor system design education. This paper details the rationale, approach, and outcomes from implementing the DRAGON12-Light Trainer board in teaching an upper-level undergraduate microprocessors course at Oakland University. The course's primary goal…

Contemporary education calls for innovative strategies to move away from traditional teacher-centered methods to methods that engage students and enhance learning outcomes. This shift toward student-centered learning is crucial for achieving educational goals and making the next generation more adaptable to the modern era. This paper examines the…

Learning object oriented programming (OOP) has been a daunting and challenging task for students across tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Various literatures have suggested the use of technology as a way to improve students' understanding of the subject. In this study, the overall aim is to investigate the effect of Imikode- a virtual reality (VR)…

Instruction in an introductory programming course is typically designed to introduce new concepts and to review and integrate the more recent concepts with what was previously learned in the course. Therefore, most exam questions in an introductory programming course require students to write lines of code that contain syntactic elements…

Programming skills are increasingly important to the current digital economy, yet these skills have long been regarded as challenging to acquire. A central challenge in learning programming skills involves the simultaneous use of multiple component skills. This article investigates why students struggle with integrating component skills--a…

The effective teaching of the concept of programming, where critical thinking is an important factor, is not so easy in secondary education. New teaching approaches, including, game-based learning, may provide a solution due to their inclusion of more fun and diverse activities but they still lack the active participation of the students in the…

The advent of the high-throughput next-generation sequencing produced a large number of biological data. Knowledge discovery from the huge amount of available biological data requires researchers to develop solid skills in biology and computer science. As the majority of the Bioinformatics professionals are either computer science or life sciences…

Computational thinking (CT) is a fundamental skill and an analytical ability that children in the twenty-first century should develop. Students should begin to work with algorithmic problem-solving and computational methods in K-12. Drawing on a conceptual framework (IGGIA) that combines CT and problem-solving, this study designed and implemented…

Coding education has been offered to primary school students due to certain reasons: (1) coding improves students' problem solving and creative thinking skills; and (2) it has high visual-quality and easy-to-use block-based tools. In this study, the effects of coding education on 4th grade students' self-efficacy and scratch coding achievement…

Students completing undergraduate majors in chemistry are not typically required to undergo formal training in computer programming or coding. As a result, many chemistry students are graduating without skills in understanding, writing, or manipulating computer code. This skills gap places students at a disadvantage, considering the widespread and…