We introduce end-user programmers as a group of persons engaged in informal Computer Science education. Results of a small-scale survey for a previously unstudied population of end-users, users of graphics manipulation software, are presented. We find ...

This paper describes two pilot studies, one completed and one ongoing, that evaluate the use of Tablet PCs and a Tablet-PC-based classroom presentation system in an introductory computer science class. The presentation system, Classroom Presenter [2, 3],...

Many Computer Science and Engineering curricula contain core modules on computer programming and programming languages. An increasing number of institutions choose to introduce undergraduates to programming through object oriented languages. As part of ...

This study focuses on CS minor students' decisions to drop out from the CS1 course. The high level of drop out percentage has been a problem at Helsinki University of Technology for many years. This course has yearly enrolment of 500-600 students and ...

The development of high level programming knowledge is not well known and there are no direct techniques to evaluate and measure it. Measurement of programming skills is mostly based on the evaluation of programs written by students but the final ...

Our research explores what we call compilation behaviour: the programming behaviour a student engages in while repeatedly editing and compiling their programs. This edit-compile cycle often represents students' attempts to make their programs ...

Empirical studies of novice programming typically rely on code solutions or test responses as the basis of their analyses. While such data can provide insight into novice programming knowledge, they say little about the programming processes in which ...

Since its publication, Lave and Wenger's concept of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) [18] has become an important concept for understanding situated learning. LPP states that learning only occurs when students perceive that what's being taught ...

This paper notes the seeming lack of theoretical perspective in computing education in both teaching and research. In the absence of a "paradigm" to guide practice it is recommended that individual teachers and researchers develop or adopt personal ...

We examine students' commonsense understanding of computer science concepts before they receive any formal instruction in the field. Specifically, we asked students on the first day of a CS1 class to describe in English how they would arrange a set of ...

In this article, we try to create a general, worldwide picture of teachers' opinion about what should be taught in introductory programming courses. We focus on the debate about restructuring CS1. The study explores what teachers believe is important to ...

Empirical evaluation of visualizations has so far been typically carried out by measuring the performance of participants that have been shown the visualization in relation to control group by grading programming tasks. Such studies tell little about ...

Developers of program visualization (PV) systems generally claim positive affective effects of PV usage such as increased motivation. This work attempts to characterize and measure these effects. The methodology is based on video analysis of classroom ...

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 2nd International Computing Education Research Workshop, sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE)---ICER 2006. This second workshop highlights a growing community ...