| 1. |
- Börstler, Jürgen, 1960-, et al.
(författare)
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Transitioning to OOP/Java : A never ending story
- 2008
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Ingår i: Reflections on the teaching of programming. - Berlin, Heidelberg : Springer. - 9783540779339 ; , s. 80-97
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 2. |
- Eckerdal, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Can graduating students design software systems?
- 2006
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Ingår i: SIGCSE ’06. - New York NY, USA : ACM. - 1595932593 ; , s. 403-407
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines software designs produced by students nearing completion of their Computer Science degrees. The results of this multi-national, multi-institutional experiment present some interesting implications for educators.
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| 3. |
- Eckerdal, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Categorizing student software designs : methods, results, and implications
- 2006
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Ingår i: Computer Science Education. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0899-3408 .- 1744-5175. ; 16:3, s. 197-209
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines the problem of studying and comparing student software designs. We propose semantic categorization as a way to organize widely varying data items. We describe how this was used to organize a particular multi-national, multi-institutional dataset, and present the results of this analysis: most students are unable to effectively design software. We examine how these designs vary with different academic and demographic factors, and discuss the implications of this work on both education and education research.
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| 4. |
- McCartney, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Computing students learning computing informally
- 2010
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Ingår i: Koli Calling '10. - New York, NY, USA : ACM Digital Library. - 9781450305204 ; , s. 43-48
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper we present background and early results from an investigation of how computing students learn computer science topics through informal means, that is, outside of organized classes. We provide some overall perspective by discussing the variety of research areas that fall under the general \informal learning" name. From there we propose specific research questions that concern what the students learn, what resources they bring to bear, what strategies they employ, and how they evaluate their progress. Preliminary results indicate that students primarily learn specific technologies, and that both their motivation and evaluation are closely tied to projects (at school, work, or home).
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| 5. |
- McCartney, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Questions, annotations, and institutions : observations from a study of novice programmers
- 2004
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Ingår i: Kolin Kolistelut. - Helsinki, Finland : Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Laboratory of Information Processing Science, FINLAND. - 9512274388 ; , s. 11-19
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines results from a multiple-choice test given to novice programmers at twelve institutions, with specific focus on annotations made by students on their tests. We found that the question type affected both student performance and student annotations. Classifying student answers by question type, annotation type (tracing, elimination, other, or none), and institution, we found that tracing was most effective for one type of question and elimination for the other, but overall, any annotation was better than none.
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| 6. |
- McCartney, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Successful students’ strategies for getting unstuck
- 2007
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Ingår i: ITiCSE ’07. - New York, NY, USA : ACM. - 9781595936103 ; , s. 156-160
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Students often “get stuck” when trying to learn new computing concepts and skills. In this paper, we present and categorize strategies that successful students found helpful in getting unstuck. We found that the students reported using a broad range of strategies, and that these strategies fall into a number of recognizably different categories.
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| 7. |
- Moström, Jan Erik, 1962-
(författare)
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A study of student problems in learning to program
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Programming is a core subject within Computer Science curricula and many also consider it a particularly difficult subject to learn. There have been many studies and suggestions on what causes these difficulties and what can be done to improve the situation. This thesis builds on previous work, trying to understand what difficulties students have when learning to program. The included papers cover several areas encountered when trying to learn programming. In Paper I we study how students use annotations during problem solving. The results show that students who annotate more also tend to be more successful. However, the results also indicate that there might be a cultural bias towards the use of annotations. Not only do students have problems with programming, they also have problems with designing software. Even graduating students fail to a large extent on simple design tasks. Our results in Paper II show that the majority of the students do not go beyond restating the problem when asked to design a system. Getting stuck is something that most learners experience at one time or another. In Paper III we investigate how successful students handle these situations. The results show that the students use a large number of different strategies to get unstuck and continue their learning. Many of the strategies involve social interaction with peers and others. In Papers IV, V, and VI we study what students experience as being key and threshold concepts in Computer Science. The results show that understanding particular concepts indeed affect the students greatly, changing the way they look at Computer Science, their peers, and themselves. The two last papers, Papers VII and VIII, investigate how researchers, teachers and students view concurrency. Most researchers/teachers claim that students have difficulties because of non-determinism, not understanding synchronization, etc. According to our results the students themselves do not seem to think that concurrency is significantly more difficult than any other subject. Actually most of them find concurrency to be both easy to understand and fun.
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| 8. |
- Moström, Jan Erik, 1962-, et al.
(författare)
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Concrete examples of abstraction as manifested in students’ transformative experiences
- 2008
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Ingår i: ICER '08. - New York : ACM. - 9781605582160 ; , s. 125-136
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines transformational learning experiences of computing students as a way to better understand threshold concepts in computing. From empirical evidence we found that students often describe transformative experiences as learning situations in which they were led to use various kinds of abstraction, for example modularity, data abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, reuse, design patterns, and complexity. Some students describe an abstract concept as coming first, and then needing to be made concrete though application; others describe transformations in which they learn the advantages of these abstract concepts from their experience of not using them.Abstraction is certainly of central importance in computer science. It appears, however, from our students’ descriptions of transformative experiences, that abstraction per se is not a threshold, but that particular concepts in which abstraction is paramount exhibit the characteristics of threshold concepts.
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| 9. |
- Moström, Jan Erik, 1962-
(författare)
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Learning Concurrency - what's the problem?
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Annan publikation (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- At least since the early~80s there have been researchers and teachers claiming that understanding concurrency is a necessity for our students. Many authors also write that concurrency is very difficult for students to learn. However, other researchers claim that concurrency is something natural to most humans and the problems are caused by the way we teach the subject and the languages/tools we use. This paper looks at a number of articles that discuss concurrency and student learning. Many of them discuss various tools, sometime without giving any evidence that they solve a problem that students actually have and/or that the tools improve the situation. Others discuss course designs, where the designs are based on assumptions about how concurrency should be taught. There are also studies that try to understand what causes the problems that students experience and how to improve the situation. Unfortunately, in reading these articles we have to come to the conclusion that the situation today is much the same as in the early-80s: We do not know how to teach concurrency.
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| 10. |
- Moström, Jan Erik, 1962-
(författare)
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Student views on learning concurrency
- 2011
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Ingår i: ICER '11. - New York, NY, USA : ACM Digital Library. - 9781450308298 ; , s. 141-142
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We interviewed eight students to better understand what kind of difficulties students have when learning concurrent programming. According to these interviews students does not consider concurrency to be radically more difficult than other Computer Science subjects - something that is in contrast to many research papers. Instead the students found concurrency to be an interesting and fun subject that they considered to be approximately equal in difficulty to other subjects. For some, the added complexity only acted as inspiring challenge. © 2011 Author.
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