In introductory computer science courses, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is commonly used to teach basic object-oriented design. However, there appears to be a lack of suitable software to support this task. Many of the available programs that support UML focus on developing code and not on enhancing learning. Programs designed for…

A study analyzing survey results of more than 850 students enrolled in college computer courses was conducted. The survey included, among other things, questions about students' preferences for a programming assignment. The three choices given were examples of common types of programming assignments found in CS1 textbooks: an application to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the longitudinal application of a suite of curriculum authoring tools (CATs) to inclusive classroom teaching practice in a secondary school setting. The study sought to establish whether the incorporation of the CATs into the teachers curriculum development and implementation covaried with improved…

This paper presents an analysis of the potential problems of importing media communication in the form of a television programme from another culture. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere in the world, the local television companies frequently buy successful television programmes from, for example, the USA or Britain with the expectation that they will be…

Several studies have demonstrated that games have been effectively used as an instructional strategy to motivate and engage students. This paper presents the use of the process of game development as an instructional strategy to promote higher order thinking skills. An analysis of the various aspects of game development including graphics,…

In the current teaching activities on curriculum, teachers taught all kinds of computer language at the most of the time. Students also focus on a variety of examinations, but the real time to train students' independent software developing skill is very limited. This has resulted in the students only to copy other people's systems design ideas,…

Ten years after the groundbreaking "From Barbie to Mortal Kombat" highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social and economic issues permeate digital game play, the number of women and girl gamers has risen considerably. Despite this, gender disparities remain in gaming. Women may be warriors in "World of…

This paper discusses the implementation of a new e-learning environment that supports non-rote learning of exploratory and inductive statistics within the pedagogical paradigm of social constructivism. The e-learning system is based on a new computational framework that allows us to create an electronic research environment where students are…

While the importance of "expressive writing," or informal, self-directed writing, has been well established, teachers underutilize it, particularly in technical writing courses. We introduce the term expressive/exploratory technical writing (XTW), which is the use of informal, self-directed writing to problem-solve in technical fields. We describe…

This article presents a project-based case study that was developed for students with diverse backgrounds and varied inclinations for engaging technical topics. The project, called History Places, requires that student teams develop a vision for a kind of digital library, propose a conceptual model, and use the model to derive a logical model and…

Mathematical knowledge can be categorized in different ways. One commonly used way is to distinguish between procedural mathematical knowledge and conceptual mathematical knowledge. Procedural knowledge of mathematics refers to formal language, symbols, algorithms, and rules. Conceptual knowledge is essential for meaningful understanding of…

Many believe that girls lack the confidence and motivation to persist with computers when they face a challenge. In order to increase the number of girls and women in information technology careers, we need a better understanding of how they think about and solve problems while working on the computer. In this article, we describe a qualitative…

Many individuals in middle school, high school, and university settings have an interest in both music and computers. This paper seeks to direct that interest by presenting a series of computer programming projects. The 53 projects fall under two categories: musical scales and musical sound production. Each group of projects is preceded by a short…

A three-semester core curriculum for undergraduate computer science is proposed and described. Both functional and imperative programming styles are taught. The curriculum particularly addresses the problem of effectively presenting both abstraction and implementation. Two courses in the first semester emphasize abstraction. The next courses…

This paper discusses the need for and the design requirements of generic chatroom software that is readily configurable to particular domains and that is also extensible. The architecture of a client/server chatroom generation system, ChatterBox, implemented in Java, is presented. The following components of ChatterBox are described: (1) the basic…