Programming promotes critical thinking, problem solving and analytic skills through creating solutions that can solve everyday problems. However, learning programming can be a daunting experience for a lot of students. "RunJumpCode" is an educational 2D platformer video game, designed and developed in Unity, to teach players the…

Due to the character of programming languages, reading ability may have more impact on learning to program than on learning in other subjects. This paper describes an exploratory study of the relationship between reading skills, as perceived through eye tracking, and the ability to program. An empirical investigation into this relationship…

Object-Oriented paradigm is a common paradigm for introductory programming courses. However, many teachers find that transitioning to teaching this paradigm is a difficult task. To overcome this complexity, many experienced teachers use microworlds to give beginner students an intuitive and rapid understanding of fundamental abstract concepts of…

Achieving learner engagement in the teaching and learning process is paramount towards ensuring knowledge retention in QBASIC programming. This study focuses on effects of b-learning and face-to-face (F2F) on college students' engagement and retention in QBASIC programming. The study adopted quasi-experimental design with non-equivalent group…

Background and Context: Encouraging undergraduate programming students to think more about their software development processes is challenging. Most programming courses focus on coding skill development and mastering programming language features; subsequently software development processes (e.g. planning, code commenting, and error debugging) are…

Learning programming is a painful process for most students, especially those learning text- based programming languages. In this study, based on the principle of Bandura's social learning theory, the vicarious real-life experiences of several pioneers in the field of IT and programming were presented as 15-minutes stories to a group of 9th…

In this paper we present a model for designing professional courses in a blended learning context as a tool to help the interaction between students, teachers and learning resources. This model aims to promote new concepts, new approaches and new strategies that have been changing the paradigm of teaching and learning. To develop a course based on…

Programming is one of the basic subjects in most informatics, computer science mathematics and technical faculties' curricula. Integrated overview of the models for teaching programming, problems in teaching and suggested solutions were presented in this paper. Research covered current state of 1019 programming subjects in 715 study programmes at…

The emergence of block-based environments aims to facilitate the problems caused by the abstractness of text-based languages. Recent studies generally focus on the effect of having block-based experience on programming education. This study is an attempt to observe the transfer of previous programming experiences (block-based vs. text-based) into…

Aim/Purpose: This research aims to describe and demonstrate the results of an intervention through educational robotics to improve the computational thinking of student teachers. Background: Educational robotics has been increasing in school classrooms for the development of computational thinking and digital competence. However, there is a lack…

This paper presents an approach to the initial programming learning using the four components instructional model and the Alice software. The quasi-experimental design was developed with two groups of students that attended two schools with very different socioeconomic status and school retention levels. The differences obtained in the mean of the…

The Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) technique is nowadays the most popular programming technique among tertiary education institutions. However, learning OOP is a cognitively demanding task for undergraduate students. Several difficulties and misconceptions have been recorded in the literature for both OOP concepts and languages, mainly Java.…

Contribution: This research study deploys three serious games with various topics in an entry-level C Programming module and investigates students' learning outcomes. The study also explores whether learners belonging to different subgroups benefit more from the use of serious games than their peers. The subgroups are formed based on learner…

Computer programming has been gradually emphasized in recent computer literacy education and regarded as a requirement for all middle school students in some countries. To understand young students' perceptions about their own learning in computer programming, this study aimed to develop an instrument, Computer Programming Self-Efficacy Scale…

The development of computational thinking is a major topic in K-12 education. Many of these experiences focus on teaching programming using block-based languages. As part of these activities, it is important for students to receive feedback on their assignments. Yet, in practice it may be difficult to provide personalized, objective and consistent…