AUS-CE

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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-...