This year we invited Dr Mats Daniels, Senior academic from the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Sweden to deliver an invited address titled Taking Competencies Seriously. He will also take part as a panel member in the first ACE doctoral consortium, sponsored by the Australian Council of Deans ICT Learning and Teaching Academy (ALTA). ALTA covered the ACE registration fee for twelve PhD students to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives with a panel of established researchers in computing education research. The doctoral consortium is chaired by Dr Margaret Hamilton from RMIT University with discussants including: Jacqueline Whalley and Tony Clear (AUT University), Daryl DSouza and James Harland (RMIT) and Angela Carbone (Monash University).
As with past ACE conferences, we are continuing to hold workshops. Three workshops have been organized, these include: Model-driven programming education led by Michael Caspersen; Developing teamwork that works supported by Australian Council of Deans ICT (ACD ICT) Teaching Fellowship led by Elena Sitnikova, Patricia Kelly and Diana Collett; Writing a good exam for a programming course led by Simon, Judy Sheard, Angela Carbone, Malcolm Corney, Raymond Lister and Donna Teague.
Proceeding Downloads
A process for novice programming using goals and plans
We propose to improve the teaching of programming to novices by using a clearly-defined and detailed process that makes use of goals and plans, and a visual programming language. We present a simple notation for designing programs in terms of data flow ...
It's never too early: pair programming in CS1
This paper describes the use of the Pair Programming software development methodology in the earliest weeks of a first programming course. Based on a broad, subjective assessment of "programming confidence", instructors placed students in level-matched ...
Distractions in programming environments
A workshop for teaching introductory programming using Lego Mindstorms NXT presented students with either a 'complete' or 'subset' form of user interface, both of which are pre-packaged with the application. The learning activities presented to all ...
Identifying career outcomes as the first step in ICT curricula development
- Nicole Herbert,
- Kristy de Salas,
- Ian Lewis,
- Mike Cameron-Jones,
- Winyu Chinthammit,
- Julian Dermoudy,
- Leonie Ellis,
- Matthew Springer
While much advertising for ICT degrees uses career outcomes to market them to potential students, there is little evidence about whether these outcomes have been truly embedded into the curriculum and hence whether they can actually be attained by ...
Student concerns in introductory programming courses
Student evaluations of courses across many Australian universities typically give students the option to comment on the best aspects of a course and those aspects that they believe need improving. Such comments have been collated from students in ...
Stakeholder-led curriculum redesign
- Nicole Herbert,
- Julian Dermoudy,
- Leonie Ellis,
- Mike Cameron-Jones,
- Winyu Chinthammit,
- Ian Lewis,
- Kristy de Salas,
- Matthew Springer
The University of Tasmania is undertaking a 'green-fields' replacement of its existing undergraduate ICT offerings. As part of the process over thirty industry members and educators were interviewed to gain their advice on what should be included in the ...
Measuring the difficulty of code comprehension tasks using software metrics
In this paper we report on an empirical study into the use of software metrics as a way of estimating the difficulty of code comprehension tasks. Our results indicate that software metrics can provide useful information about the difficulties inherent ...
Revisiting models of human conceptualisation in the context of a programming examination
This paper reports on an evaluation of the Block model for the measurement of code comprehension questions in a first semester programming examination. A set of exam questions is classified using the Block model and two commonly employed taxonomies, ...
A conceptual model for reflecting on expected learning vs. demonstrated student performance
Educators are faced with many challenging questions in designing an effective curriculum. What prerequisite knowledge do students have before commencing a new subject? At what level of mastery? What is the spread of capabilities between bare-passing ...
A qualitative think aloud study of the early neo-piagetian stages of reasoning in novice programmers
Recent research indicates that some of the difficulties faced by novice programmers are manifested very early in their learning. In this paper, we present data from think aloud studies that demonstrate the nature of those difficulties. In the think ...
What vs. how: comparing students' testing and coding skills
The well-known difficulties students exhibit when learning to program are often characterised as either difficulties in understanding the problem to be solved or difficulties in devising and coding a computational solution. It would therefore be helpful ...
Visualisation of learning management system usage for detecting student behaviour patterns
Identifying "at-risk" students - those that are in danger of failing or not completing a course - is a crucial element in enabling students to achieve their full potential. However, with large class sizes and growing academic workloads, it is becoming ...
A comparative analysis of results on programming exams
Measuring student performance on assessments is increasingly important, especially when mapping outcomes to particular topics in a university subject. In this paper we investigate the classification of exam questions. In particular, we examine the ...
Examining student reflections from a constructively aligned introductory programming unit
Constructive alignment has been widely accepted as a strong pedagogical approach that promotes deep learning, however its application to programming units in higher education has not been widely reported. A constructively aligned introductory ...
Computational thinking and practice: a generic approach to computing in Danish high schools
Internationally, there is a growing awareness on the necessity of providing relevant computing education in schools, particularly high schools. We present a new and generic approach to Computing in Danish High Schools based on a conceptual framework ...
How difficult are exams?: a framework for assessing the complexity of introductory programming exams
- Judy Sheard,
- Simon,
- Angela Carbone,
- Donald Chinn,
- Tony Clear,
- Malcolm Corney,
- Daryl D'Souza,
- Joel Fenwick,
- James Harland,
- Mikko-Jussi Laakso,
- Donna Teague
Student performance on examinations is influenced by the level of difficulty of the questions. It seems reasonable to propose therefore that assessment of the difficulty of exam questions could be used to gauge the level of skills and knowledge expected ...
Integrating source code plagiarism into a virtual learning environment: benefits for students and staff
Source code plagiarism is a growing concern in computing related courses. There are a variety of tools to help academics detect suspicious similarity in computer programs. These are purpose-built and necessarily different from the more widely used text-...
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Proceedings of the Fifteenth Australasian Computing Education Conference - Volume 136