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…

Final-year computer studies students in an expert systems class were given conventional tutorials, computerized tutorials, and computer tutorials with a mastery class. Both groups using tutorials out performed the control group; however, no statistically significant difference was found between groups using computer tutorials. Concludes that…

Describes an instructional model for teaching abstract data types (ADTs) to high school students. Presents research results regarding students' conceptualizations of ADTs and their strategies of using them in computer science problem solving. To implement the ADTs, "black boxes" were used. (AEF)

Presents an outline for a computer science instructional program for inservice or prospective teachers, based on a high school computer science curriculum. Describes three courses that include an introduction to the basics of computing, an overview of the computer science field, and selected topics in computer science teaching. (AEF)

Presented is a way to provide students with a review and an appreciation of the versatility of pointers in data structures by improvising with binary trees. Examples are described using the Pascal programing language. (KR)

Discusses results of a study based on a sample of secondary school teachers in Germany that was conducted to analyze the relationships between prior knowledge of content- and context-area topics and teaching practices in the computer education curriculum. The use of path analysis is described, and gender differences are examined. (Contains 11…

This paper focuses on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) academics' perceptions of factors that promote and inhibit their pursuit of scholarship in their teaching work. It identifies critical factors that influence academics' attitudes, orientations and behaviours in respect to the scholarship of teaching, and from these builds a…

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…

Science and technology, when applied to educational excellence, have become part of the arts and humanities of tomorrow. The interactive multimedia technology tools available to educators today provide an opportunity to build into the distance or traditional course through learning objects, highly interactive experiential exercises that allow the…

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…

This paper introduces an evaluation tool prepared to examine the quality of visuals in course-books. The tool is based on Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (i.e. Generative Theory) and its principles regarding the correct use of illustrations within text. The reason to generate the tool, the development process along with the…

This paper presents the results of a 3-year quasi-experimental study of three Masters courses in computing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which the teaching and learning of these courses were enhanced by being developed and delivered in an online format as compared to face-to-face full-time and part-time delivery. Key…

The Applied Computer Science Department at Illinois State University is in the process of implementing a reengineered curriculum that utilizes an integrated and spiral approach to subject coverage. The 1996-97 school year was the first year that upper division course prerequisites were based on the new curriculum instead of a mixture of old and…

This paper addresses primary objectives related to the design and execution of an instructional computing literacy curriculum for the fourth-year undergraduate teacher education major. The first objective discussed is the presentation of a rationale for providing computer literacy training in a preservice environment, as opposed to an inservice…