jGRASP has three integrated approaches for interacting with its dynamic viewers for data structures: debugger, workbench, and text-based interactions that allow individual Java statements and expressions to be executed/evaluated. These approaches can be used together to provide a complementary set of interactions with the dynamic viewers. Data…

The paper's contribution is a methodology that integrates two educational technologies (GLO and LEGO robot) to teach Computer Science (CS) topics at the school level. We present the methodology as a framework of 5 components (pedagogical activities, technology driven processes, tools, knowledge transfer actors, and pedagogical outcomes) and…

A multimedia university programme with relatively equal numbers of male and female students in elective programming subjects provided a rare opportunity to investigate female motivation to study and pursue computer programming in a career. The MSLQ was used to survey 85 participants. In common with research into deterrence of females from STEM…

This paper explores a new approach to engage students in authoring educational content. This approach was implemented in AnnotEx (Example Annotator) system, which allows students to annotate computer programming examples with line-by-line explanations and review annotations produced by their peers. A controlled study of AnnotEx presented in this…

Programmable logic devices (PLDs) are used at many universities in introductory digital logic laboratories, where kits containing a single high-capacity PLD replace "standard" sets containing breadboards, wires, and small- or medium-scale integration (SSI/MSI) chips. From the pedagogical point of view, two problems arise in these…

The challenge of teaching programming in higher education is complicated by problems associated with large class teaching, a prevalent situation in many developing countries. This paper reports on an investigation into the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning of programming in a class of more than 200 students. A course and…

With the advancement of information and communication technology, collaboration and knowledge sharing through technology is facilitated which enhances the learning process and improves the learning efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to review the methods of assessment and strategy of collaboration and knowledge sharing in a computer course,…

Visual program simulation (VPS) is a new, interactive form of educational program visualisation, in which learners use graphical controls to direct a program's execution rather than simply watching an animation of it. In this article, we report on a qualitative empirical study of novice programmers learning through VPS. From an analysis of…

With the benefit of multimedia and the learning cycle approach in promoting effective active learning, this paper proposed a learning cycle approach-based, multimedia-supplemented instructional unit for Structured Query Language (SQL) for second-year undergraduate students with the aim of enhancing their basic knowledge of SQL and ability to apply…

This report explores the first iteration of a teacher professional development courselet grounded in constructionist theory and activities. This online teacher professional development (oTPD) courselet provided opportunities for teachers to engage in just-in-time, ongoing TPD within a social networking site for educators. The topic of the oTPD was…

There is a battlefield where no quarter is given, no mercy shown, but not a single drop of blood is spilled. It is an arena that witnesses the bringing together of high-tech design and manufacture with the outpouring of brute force, under the remotely accessed command of some of today's brightest students. This is the world of battling robots, or…

Due to significant technological advances and industry requirements, many universities have introduced programmable logic and hardware description languages into undergraduate engineering curricula. This has led to a number of logistical and didactical challenges, in particular for computer science students. In this paper, the integration of some…

Scratch is a visual programming environment that is widely used by young people. We investigated if Scratch can be used to teach concepts of computer science (CS). We developed learning materials for middle-school students that were designed according to the constructionist philosophy of Scratch and evaluated them in a few schools during two…

As punishment in the biblical story of Moses the slaves were told they had to make bricks without straw. This was impossible because bricks made without straw had the appearance of strength and function but could not withstand the proof of actual use. The slaves' punishment was therefore not only to make bricks, but also to find the straw on their…

It has been estimated that more than two million students started computing studies in 1999 and 650,000 of them either dropped or failed their first programming course. For the individual student, dropping such a course can distract from the completion of later courses in a computing curriculum and may even result in changing their course of study…