Describes how World Wide Web delivered visual explanations of programming constructs have been used to supplement conventional instructional methods and materials traditionally employed introductory programming courses. Explanations are constructed using inexpensive commercial software that supports the use of animation, graphics, color, and…

Describes the first online undergraduate certificate program in programming which was created specifically for the deaf and hard-of-hearing at Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT's) National Technical Institute for the Deaf College. Explains modifications to videotaped lectures as well as possible future plans. (LRW)

The primary purpose of this study was to analyze different perceptions displayed by novice programmers in the C++ programming language, and determine if modularization ability could be improved by an instructional treatment that concentrated on solving computer programs from previously existing modules. This study attempted to answer the following…

Roles of variables is a new concept that captures tacit expert knowledge in a form that can be taught in introductory programming courses. A role describes some stereotypic use of variables, and only ten roles are needed to cover 99% of all variables in novice-level programs. This paper presents the results of an experiment where roles were…

Teaching programming to novices has proved challenging for both learner and lecturer due to the abstraction and complexity of the subject matter. The work described in this paper is part of an EU funded Minerva project called TUPULO (Teaching Undergraduate Programming Using Learning Objects) which aims to address the challenges faced by novice…

Parameter passing is the mechanism by which various program modules share information in a complex program; this paper was a study of novice programmers' understanding of the parameter construct. The bulk of the data was collected from interviews with eight college students enrolled in a state university introductory computer programming course.…

Based on literature and student input, six major concerns have been noted for student programming progress for the academic class and work environment. The areas of concern are module driver programming, program documentation, output design, data design, data validation; and reusable code. Each area has been analyzed and examined in the teaching…

This study explored the relationship between assignment-based teaching methods and achievement in an introductory programming course. Subjects in the study were 42 community college students in south Mississippi. All participants completed the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal and the Productive Environment Preferences Survey. These…

Compares characteristics of students taking programming-oriented versus applications-oriented higher education courses. Topics include computer engagement, programming experience, computing attitudes, a greater gender imbalance in enrollment on the programming-oriented course, the usefulness of psychometric measures, discriminant function…

The growth of the Internet has greatly increased the demand for server-side programming courses at colleges and universities. Students enrolled in such courses must be provided with server-based accounts that support the technologies that they are learning. The process of creating, managing and removing large numbers of student server accounts is…

Advanced approaches to the construction of software systems can present difficulties to learners. This is true for multi-agent systems (MAS) which exhibit concurrency, non-determinacy of structure and composition and sometimes emergent behavior characteristics. Additional barriers exist for learners because mainstream MAS technology is young and…

This article presents a study that aims at constructing a teaching framework for software development methods in higher education. The research field is a capstone project-based course, offered by the Technion's Department of Computer Science, in which Extreme Programming is introduced. The research paradigm is an Action Research that involves…

This paper describes an empirical study that investigated the knowledge that Computer Science students have about the extent of their own previous learning. The study compared self-generated estimates of performance with actual performance on a data structures quiz taken by undergraduate students in courses requiring data structures as a…

In the summer of 2003, a project to augment and improve the teaching of information assurance courses was started at IUP. Thus far, ten hands-on exercises have been developed. The exercises described in this article, and presented in the appendix, are based on actions required to secure a Linux host. Publicly available resources were used to…

This paper outlines a senior seminar, or "capstone" course, in computer science developed at the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg. It was intended that the senior seminar should differ in classroom format from other courses in the major. Course requirements include timed oral presentations, reading of science fiction in which…