Unlike most program assessment systems, Program Assessment using Specified Solutions (PASS), evaluates student C programs by assessing the way a problem was solved by performing a comparison of the submitted program with a solution plan. This article describes PASS, its use of instructor specified solution plans, assessment and feedback systems,…

Discusses the University of Wisconsin's Women and Science program which is a four-year program aimed at addressing the underrepresentation of women and minorities in mathematics, science, and engineering. Discusses extra challenges in computing, encourages faculty to share concerns with students, and offers some solutions that can be applied in…

Addresses how the Department of Computer Science at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa has attempted to make computer science accessible to students who have been disadvantaged by the apartheid system. (Author/MKR)

Examines the history of major achievements in computer science as portrayed by winners of the prestigious Turing award and identifies a possibly unique activity called Theory-Guided Technology (TGT). Researchers develop TGT by using theoretical results to create practical technology. Discusses reasons why TGT is practical in computer science and…

CDM, for computational discrete mathematics, is a course that attempts to teach a number of topics in discrete mathematics to computer science majors. The course abandons the classical definition-theorem-proof model, and instead relies heavily on computation as a source of motivation and also for experimentation and illustration. The emphasis on…

This investigation compared fantasy-proneness levels and IQ scores in gifted adolescents with primary talent areas in 1 of 4 domains: mathematics, computer science, creative writing, and chemistry. The Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings: Children's Form (ICMIC; Myers, 1983) was used to assess fantasy-proneness. IQ scores were generated…

The rapid rate of expansion of the disciplines of biotechnology, genomics, and bioinformatics emphasizes the increased interdependency between computer science and biology, with mathematics serving as the bridge between these disciplines. This paper demonstrates this inter-relationship within the context of a computational model for a biological…

Structural learning aids, such as interactive overviews (IOs), have previously been shown to facilitate text comprehension and recall. In this study, we examined the effects of structural aids on learners' structural knowledge and their performance on a procedural transfer task. In Experiment 1, 90 college students were presented definitions of…

From time to time developers of (database) applications will encounter, explicitly or implicitly, structures such as trees, graphs, and networks. Such applications can, for instance, relate to bills of material, organization charts, networks of (rail)roads, networks of conduit pipes (e.g., plumbing, electricity), telecom networks, and data…

Although group project concepts and skills have become a major component in most information systems (IS) academic programs, very little research has attempted to examine factors that may improve or undermine effectiveness of IS group projects. Accordingly, based on relevant literatures, this study develops and empirically tests a model of factors…

It has been well established in the literature that girls are turning their backs on computing courses at all levels of the education system. One reason given for this is that the computer learning environment is not conducive to girls, and it is often suggested that they would benefit from learning computing in a single-sex environment. The…

This article, based on a longitudinal, ethnographic study among engineering students, examines the interactional processes surrounding second language (L2) socialization. L2 socialization perspectives argue that the cognitive and the social are interconnected, and that learning an L2 is a process of coming to understand socially constructed…

Expert programmers possess schemas, abstractions of concrete experiences, which help them solve programming problems and lessen the load on their working memory during problem solving. Possession of schemas is a key difference between novices and experts, which is why instructors need to help students construct them. One recent tool for…

A new classification system for computing education papers is presented and applied to every computing education paper published between January 2004 and January 2007 at the two premier computing education conferences in Australia and New Zealand. We find that while simple reports outnumber other types of paper, a healthy proportion of papers…

The "Chronicle of Higher Education" recently reported that the number of doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S. rose 3.4 percent in 2004, largely because of an increase in foreign students [Smallwood (2005). Doctoral degrees rose 3.4% in 2004, survey finds. The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 9, 2005]. Currently, 20.9 percent [National…