This study investigates the association between instructional design projects and 21st-Century skills. A causal-comparative design was utilised. The participants were 85 computer education and instructional technology department students who registered for a core instructional design course. The participants are divided into two groups: Rapid…

The instructors generally utilize conventional methods in teaching software engineering courses, where the students are provided theoretical knowledge based on text books or lecture notes. Usage of collaborative tools may be a solution to the problems of not practicing the depth of the components of the subject. This study proposes the usage of a…

The value of an instructor is that she exactly recognizes what the learner is struggling with and provides constructive feedback straight to the point. This work aims at a step towards this type of feedback in the context of an introductory programming course, where students perform program execution tracing to align their understanding of Java…

Understanding data structures is fundamental for mastering algorithms. In order to solve problems and tasks, students must be able to choose the most appropriate data structure in which the data is stored and that helps in the process of the solution. Of course, there is no single correct solution, but in many cases, it is an important step to…

Background: Peer evaluation in software engineering (SE) project courses enhances the learning experience of students. It also helps instructors monitor and assess both teams and individual students. Peer evaluations might influence the way individual students and teams work; therefore, the quality of the peer evaluations should be tracked through…

Purpose: Debates are well known to encompass a variety of skills we would like higher education candidates to embody when they graduate. Design/methodology/approach: Debates in a classroom with computer science as the main subject has been popular in high schools particularly with emerging issues around the area, however it does not have as an…

Peer assessment plays an important part in education, fostering involvement and critical thinking skills for the students, while reducing the grading workload for the teacher. However, research on review allocation mechanisms in the context of peer assessment is relatively scarce in the literature. Although the first electronic peer assessment…

The Computational Thinking (CT) teaching approach allows students to practice problem-solving in a way that they can use the Computer Science mindset. In this sense, Collaborative Learning has a lot to contribute to educational activities involving the CT. This article presents the design and evaluation of a Collaborative Learning framework for…

With the number of jobs in computer occupations on the rise, there is a greater need for computer science (CS) graduates than ever. At the same time, most CS departments across the country are only seeing 25-30% of women students in their classes, meaning that we are failing to draw interest from a large portion of the population. In this work, we…

Computer science is a fast-growing field in today's digitized age, and working in this industry often requires creativity and innovative thought. An issue within computer science education, however, is that large introductory programming courses often involve little opportunity for creative thinking within coursework. The undergraduate…

To help novice learners overcome the obstacles of learning computational thinking (CT) through programming, it is vital to identify difficult CT components. This study aimed to determine the computational concepts and practices that learners may have difficulties acquiring and discuss how programming instructions should be designed to facilitate…

Universities are reflections of our societies and are tasked with educating the next generation of experts. The computer science (CS) phenomenon, with its high-paying jobs, attracts more students than ever to the CS undergraduate major. One may wonder why women are underrepresented in the CS major if they constitute half of university enrollment…

With the increasing integration of computer science into school curricula, a growing number of pupils are coming into contact with this subject. To get as many pupils as possible interested in computer science, the teaching strategies and methods must meet the heterogeneous prerequisites of the pupils. The purpose of this paper is to find out how…

Computer programming has become an essential part of K12 education, promoted as a way for students to engage in computational thinking that helps develop students' ability to analyze and solve problems and prepare them for future careers. Tabletop board games are seen as an effective means to help students learn computer programming. Several board…

In this manuscript, we describe a coding club we created and implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were purposeful in creating the club to: (a) focus on design and problem solving as the basis for learning computer coding and (b) include elements to improve the engagement of girls. We ran multiple iterations of a Girls Design with Code Club…