Effects of Personal Construal Levels and Team Role Ambiguity on the Group Investigation of Junior High School Students’ Programming Ability

Concerns regarding the high demand for skilled personnel in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields underline the importance of developing advanced information technology (IT) and programming skills among job candidates. In the past 10 years, computer programming has regained considerable attention because of rapid developments in computer programming technology. Advocates claim that computer programming cultivates other skills, including problem solving, logical thinking, and creativity. Education systems worldwide are developing courses to instruct students in programming and computational thinking. Although the importance of computer programming has been widely recognized, the systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of teaching methods and conditions that promote the learning of programming knowledge and skills has received little scholarly attention. This study thus investigated the moderating roles of learners’ construal levels and their team role ambiguity in the context of group investigation in junior high school programing courses. In this study, junior high school students were divided into pairs to develop Arduino projects. Students applied programming abilities to complete a task involving the use of Arduino boards to simulate the operation of traffic lights. Major research findings indicate that construal levels play a significant role in moderating the relationship between programming ability and learning outcome; however, role ambiguity does not significantly affect this relationship. Theoretical implications are discussed, and managerial implications are suggested.

Comparison of flow-based versus block-based programming for naive programmers

There is general agreement that most people should have some programming ability, whether to investigate the vast amount of data around them or for professional purposes. Visual Programming Languages comprise two broad categories: Flow-based, functional programming or Block-based, imperative programming. However, there has been a lack of empirical studies in the visual programming domain to evaluate the relative benefits of the two categories. This research provides an empirical study to analyze the effects of the comparison between Flowbased and Block-based paradigm, to determine which of the two representations is easier for non-programmers or novice programmers. Each user is given a random, simple problem to program in a random environment. Both of the environments, Flow-based and Block-based are designed to be as similar as possible to make the comparison useful. The results indicate that Flow and Block are equivalent environments for non-programmers or novice programmers in terms of usability and effectiveness.

Comparison of flow-based versus block-based programming for naive programmers

There is general agreement that most people should have some programming ability, whether to investigate the vast amount of data around them or for professional purposes. Visual Programming Languages comprise two broad categories: Flow-based, functional programming or Block-based, imperative programming. However, there has been a lack of empirical studies in the visual programming domain to evaluate the relative benefits of the two categories. This research provides an empirical study to analyze the effects of the comparison between Flowbased and Block-based paradigm, to determine which of the two representations is easier for non-programmers or novice programmers. Each user is given a random, simple problem to program in a random environment. Both of the environments, Flow-based and Block-based are designed to be as similar as possible to make the comparison useful. The results indicate that Flow and Block are equivalent environments for non-programmers or novice programmers in terms of usability and effectiveness.

Exploration and Practice of Improving Programming Ability for the Undergraduates

Programming ability is one of the most important abilities for the undergraduates majoring in computer science. Taking Yunnan University as an example, the necessity and importance of improving the ability of programming is analyzed in this paper. The exploration and practice of improving students' ability of programming are discussed from four aspects: arrangement and reform of programming curriculums, construction of online programming practice innovation platform, certification of programming ability and organization of programming competitions. These reforms have achieved good results in recent years, which can provide reference for the practical teaching reform of computer specialty in relevant universities.

Robot-assisted feeding: A technical application that combines learning from demonstration and visual interaction

BACKGROUND: The traditional meal assistance robots use human-computer interaction such as buttons, voice, and EEG. However, most of them rely on excellent programming technology for development, in parallelism with exhibiting inconvenient interaction or unsatisfactory recognition rates in most cases. OBJECTIVE: To develop a convenient human-computer interaction mode with a high recognition rate, which allows users to make the robot show excellent adaptability in the new environment without programming ability. METHODS: A visual interaction method based on deep learning was used to develop the feeding robot: when the camera detects that the user’s mouth is open for 2 seconds, the feeding command is turned on, and the feeding is temporarily conducted when the eyes are closed for 2 seconds. A programming method of learning from the demonstration, which is simple and has strong adaptability to different environments, was employed to generate a feeding trajectory. RESULTS: The user is able to eat independently through convenient visual interaction, and it only requires the caregiver to drag and teach the robotic arm once in the face of a new eating environment.