With the high influx of computer science enrollment in universities in the last decade, there is increasing value and wide-reaching effects in improving pedagogy in the field. This improvement is especially useful in introductory computer science courses (CS1). Student experience in the first programming course is known to heavily influence…

Background and Context: While assessment of computational thinking concepts, practices, and perspectives is at the forefront of K-12 CS education, supporting student "communication about computation" has received relatively little attention. Objective: To examine the usability of process-based portfolios for capturing students'…

This study aims to examine the effectiveness and value of using Agile work practices to enhance group satisfaction in project-based courses. This study explores student perceptions of using Agile in a group, project-based course to support how Agile can be utilized in higher education to positively enhance group collaboration and teamwork. Surveys…

Metacognition and self-regulation are important skills for successful learning and have been discussed and researched extensively in the general education literature for several decades. More recently, there has been growing interest in understanding how metacognitive and self-regulatory skills contribute to student success in the context of…

This research is focused on how to support students' acquisition of program construction skills through worked examples. Although examples have been consistently proven to be valuable for student's learning, the learning technology for computer science education lacks program construction examples with interactive elements that could engage…

Abstraction is one of the most fundamental ideas in computer science (CS), and as such, according to Bruner, it should be taught spirally, starting as early as possible and revisited at every level of education. However, teaching CS abstraction to novices is a very challenging task, and CS educational research has often demonstrated students'…

The role of teacher agency in professional learning has been the subject of several qualitative studies but has not yet been tested in an experimental setting. To provide causal evidence of the impact of teacher agency on the effectiveness of professional learning, we conducted a preregistered randomized controlled trial in an online computer…

This paper describes an interdisciplinary effort involving faculty from five different disciplines who came together to develop an interdisciplinary, open, general education cybersecurity course. The course, Cybersecurity, Technology, and Society, brings together ideas from interdisciplinary studies, information technology, engineering, business,…

Background and Context: The relationship between novices' first programming language and their future achievement has drawn increasing interest owing to recent efforts to expand K-12 computing education. This article contributes to this topic by analyzing data from a retrospective study of more than 10,000 undergraduates enrolled in introductory…

Since 2014, the University Libraries at the University of Oklahoma in Norman has been a member of the Software Carpentry Foundation (now part of "The Carpentries"), a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching basic computing skills to researchers. Through this partnership, we have taught over a dozen introductory programming workshops…

Computational thinking (CT) involves breaking a problem into smaller components and solving it using algorithmic thinking and abstraction. CT is no longer exclusively for computer scientists but for everyone. While CT does not necessarily require programming, learning programming to enhance CT skills at a young age can help shape the next…

Online textbooks allow instructors to provide interactive and engaging activities for students. In this paper, we look at how providing an interactive online textbook is utilized and valued in a beginning computer programming course. In addition, we compare the utilization of the online textbook to the student final course grade. Our findings…

A quality computer science (CS) teacher needs to understand students' common misconceptions in learning CS. This study explored one aspect of CS teachers' understanding of student misconceptions: their perceptions of student misconceptions related to introductory programming. Perceptions in this study included three parts: teachers' perceived…

The article is devoted to the issues of teaching mobile application development and, as a consequence, training of highly qualified in-demand mobile developers. Nowadays, training professional mobile developers is a crucial task all over the world. The researchers emphasize the complexity of mobile application development associated with its…

The rise in demand for computer programming jobs has created a significant need for computer programming training. Online learning can be an effective tool for meeting the needs of these job demands. The challenge for universities is that computer programming is perceived as a difficult course by many students (Askar & Davenport, 2009; Baser,…