Computer Science Education Research

This chapter aims to present and summarize a variety of research areas that directly or indirectly have influenced Computer Science Education Research, particularly associated to the teaching and learning of programming. It is known that many students encounter a lot of difficulties in introductory programming courses. Possible reasons for these difficulties are discussed and some existing proposals in the literature are presented. Based on this discussion, the chapter also includes a description of work done at the University of Coimbra, trying to define more adequate pedagogical strategies for introductory programming courses. The results obtained and their implementation in a common undergraduate course are presented and discussed. The authors conclude that this new strategy makes learning more stimulating for the students, minimizes dropout intentions, and makes the students learn more and better. The chapter ends with suggestions of future research opportunities within the topic of teaching and learning of programming.

Design a Computer Programming Learning Environment for Massive Open Online Courses

Teaching and learning computer programming is as challenging as it is difficult. Assessing the work of students and providing individualised feedback is time-consuming and error prone for teachers and frequently involves a time delay. The existent tools prove to be insufficient in domains where there is a greater need to practice. At the same time, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are appearing, revealing a new way of learning. However, this paradigm raises serious questions regarding the monitoring of student progress and its timely feedback. This chapter provides a conceptual design model for a computer programming learning environment. It uses the portal interface design model, gathering information from a network of services such as repositories, program evaluators, and learning management systems, a central piece in the MOOC realm. This model is not limited to the domain of computer programming and can be adapted to any area that requires evaluation with immediate feedback.

Massive Open Online Course Management

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are gaining prominence in transversal teaching-learning strategies. However, there are many issues still debated, namely assessment, recognized largely as a cornerstone in Education. The large number of students involved requires a redefinition of strategies that often use approaches based on tasks or challenging projects. In these conditions and due to this approach, assessment is made through peer-reviewed assignments and quizzes online. The peer-reviewed assignments are often based upon sample answers or topics, which guide the student in the task of evaluating peers. This chapter analyzes the grading and evaluation in MOOCs, especially in science and engineering courses, within the context of education and grading methodologies and discusses possible perspectives to pursue grading quality in massive e-learning courses.

An Effective Way to Teach Language Processing Courses

All of us that teach Language Processing topics are aware that a great part of the students face big difficulties and a lack of motivation inherent to the concept abstraction level and to the technical capacities required to implement efficient processors. In order to overcome this problem, a starting point is to identify the main concepts involved in Language Processing subject and to consider that a person learns when he/she is involved in a process. The authors argue that motivation is a crucial factor to engage students in the course work, and it is highly dependent on the languages used to work on during the course. Therefore, they discuss the characteristics that a language should have to be a motivating case study. The authors think that LP teachers should be very careful in their choices and be astute in the way they explore the underlying grammars along the course evolution.

ZatLab

Computer programming is not an easy task, and as with all difficult tasks, it can be faced as tedious, impossible to do, or as a challenge. Therefore, learning to program with a purpose enables that “challenge mindset” and encourages the student to apply himself in overcoming his handicaps and exploring different theories and methods to achieve his goal. This chapter describes the process of programming a framework with the purpose of achieving real time human gesture recognition. Just this is already a good challenge, but the ultimate goal is to enable new ways of Human-Computer Interaction through expressive gestures and to allow a performer the possibility of controlling (with his gestures), in real time, creative artistic events. The chapter starts with a review on human gesture recognition. Then it presents the framework architecture, its main modules, and algorithms. It closes with the description of two artistic applications using the ZatLab framework.

A Review of Teaching and Learning through Practice of Optimization Algorithms

Algorithmics is an important core subject matter in computer science education. In particular, optimization algorithms are some of the most difficult to master because their problem statement includes an additional property, namely optimality. The chapter contains a comprehensive survey of the teaching and learning through practice of optimization algorithms. In particular, three important issues are reviewed. Firstly, the authors review educational methods which partially or completely address optimization algorithms. Secondly, educational software systems are reviewed and classified according to technical and educational criteria. Thirdly, students' difficulties and misunderstandings regarding optimization algorithms are presented. The chapter intends to consolidate current knowledge about the education of this class of algorithms for both computer science teachers and computer science education researchers.

Small-Group vs. Competitive Learning in Computer Science Classrooms

The focus of this meta-analytic chapter was to quantitatively integrate and synthesize the accumulated pedagogical research that examined the effectiveness of one of the various small-group learning methods in maximizing students' academic achievement in undergraduate computer science classrooms. The results of the meta-analysis show that cooperative, collaborative, problem-based, and pair learning pedagogies were used in college-level computer science classrooms with an overall average effect-size of 0.41. The results of the multilevel analysis reveal that the effect sizes were heterogeneous and the effects were explored further by including the coded predictors in the conditional multilevel model in efforts to explain the variability. The results of the conditional multilevel model reveal that the effect sizes were influenced significantly by both instructional duration and assessment type of the studies. The findings imply that the present evidence-based research supports the effectiveness of active small-group learning methods in promoting students' achievement in computer science classrooms.

Open Source Social Networks in Education

Social computing systems such as Social Network Sites have become more powerful. In some universities, SNSs have been adopted as a communication method between teachers and students. In addition, educational institutions have started the initiative of using open source social networking application. This chapter discusses the benefits of adopting open source SNS in education. It is organized as follows: 1) a literature review to properly define the terms, 2) a discussion of the effect of open source social networking technologies on education systems, 3) an overview of Elgg, followed by a comparison with different social learning platforms, 4) a case study of implementing Elgg at the Computer Science Department at the University of Balamand, 5) an exhibition of the requirements for the Next Generation SCORM, 6) a case study using Tin Can API with open source SNSs (Elgg), and 7) a conclusion wrapping up the chapter.

Ensemble

Currently, the teaching-learning process in domains, such as computer programming, is characterized by an extensive curricula and a high enrolment of students. This poses a great workload for faculty and teaching assistants responsible for the creation, delivery, and assessment of student exercises. The main goal of this chapter is to foster practice-based learning in complex domains. This objective is attained with an e-learning framework—called Ensemble—as a conceptual tool to organize and facilitate technical interoperability among services. The Ensemble framework is used on a specific domain: computer programming. Content issues are tacked with a standard format to describe programming exercises as learning objects. Communication is achieved with the extension of existing specifications for the interoperation with several systems typically found in an e-learning environment. In order to evaluate the acceptability of the proposed solution, an Ensemble instance was validated on a classroom experiment with encouraging results.

Moodle-Based Tool to Improve Teaching and Learning of Relational Databases Design and SQL DML Queries

The challenge to prepare the graduates for working in a constantly changing environment like software engineering requires an effective learning framework. This chapter presents a tool, integrated in the Moodle learning management system, that allows students to train the process of designing relational databases. The tool also allows them to practice with SQL queries that are executed over relational databases previously designed. This chapter also describes the result of a qualitative analysis of its use in an engineering course offered at the University of Valladolid and focused on the teaching of the Web applications development. The results of the refereed study reveal that the tool was found useful by both students and teachers to support the teaching and learning process of relational databases.