Search

Contributions: The underrepresentation of women in computer science (CS) majors has long been a focus of attention in many academic documents, the majority of them from the United States and Europe. There is, however, a lack of information about educational interventions (EIs) for women in computing in Latin America. The contribution of this article is to cover this gap and describe what researchers in Latin American countries have been publishing about the recruitment and retention of women in the CS field. Background: Many EIs targeting female students at different educational levels—K-12, undergraduate, and graduate—have been undertaken to increase the participation of women in computing in Latin America. However, descriptions of these activities rarely are included in international academic databases. Research Questions: This literature mapping addresses two main research questions (RQ) about the topic of women in computing in academic publications in Latin American countries: RQ1) what are the characteristics of the publications about women in computing in Latin America? and RQ2) what are the published interventions to recruit and retain women in computing in Latin America? To answer RQ1, six subquestions were created covering year, language, country of origin, document type, and professional track. Furthermore, for RQ2, two subquestions were created involving educational level and the use of software development with a female theme. Methodology: This investigation used the systematic literature mapping process. To achieve a broad coverage of papers, the following sources were included: Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EBSCO, the proceedings of the Latin American Women in Computing Conference (LAWCC), and those of the Women in Technology (WIT) workshop colocated with the annual conference of the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). The included papers were published in the last decade (2010–2020) and written in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. Findings: The literature mapping encompasses 197 academic documents, 48.2% of which were written in Portuguese, 28.7% in English, and 23.1% in Spanish. The papers originated from 15 of the 20 Latin American countries. Brazil and Costa Rica have the highest number of publications overall. The documents describe initiatives to increase the participation of women in computing majors that cover the entire educational spectrum, from K-12 to graduate programs, but papers targeting populations in higher education have started to appear recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper contributes to the literature by confirming the existence, in gender and socio-economic diversified higher educational environments, of differential evaluation ratings given by students to their teachers. Background: Women and low socio-economic classes have historically been under-represented, both as students and teachers. Various policies and measures are being put in place internationally to raise their standing, equity, and success as they progress in their careers. To be effective, the after effects of these policies must be investigated and understood. Research Questions: This paper addressed the question of whether gender and socio-economic differences, in both teachers and students, affect students’ opinion of their teachers in higher education, across a number of disciplines. Methodology: The research analyzed the differentials in students’ ratings of their teachers in five disciplines in the field of education. Data was drawn from student responses to the surveys conducted in a large Indian university at the end of each course unit. The survey questions elicit their perceptions of teaching quality in the disciplines of civil engineering, electrical engineering, computer science engineering, mathematics, humanities and social sciences. This paper analyzes 112 919 and 16 354 complete sets of student ratings, to study the gender and socio-economic diversity based effects respectively. Statistical multivariate and univariate general linear models were used to derive the relevant results and graphs. Findings: The study reveals the existence of socio-economic status bias, gender-typical behavior, gender-atypical behavior, and same-gender and cross-gender biases; these resulted in differential ratings in the disciplines examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper argues for a shift in how students’ team project experiences are assessed. Findings from this paper suggest that it is not enough to consider student-reported data in assessing team dynamics; hidden gendered behavior may be impacting students in ways that students do not realize or report. Background: Although the number of women in engineering is rising, difficulties still exist for female students in electrical engineering and computer science, particularly in team projects. Male and female students may have very different project experiences, due to differing levels of confidence/self-efficacy, difficult team dynamics, or inequitable task division. Research Questions: This paper aimed to elucidate what differences exist in the project experience between male and female students, considering self-reported measures (engineering confidence/self-efficacy, time spent on task, and team satisfaction) and observational study. Methodology: Students completed pre/post-project surveys, weekly logs, and post-project interviews to report and discuss their engineering confidence/self-efficacy, project task selection, and team satisfaction. This paper reports a case study of one student team, observed by a researcher throughout the project course. Findings: While student-reported data implied a lack of gender division (male and female students had the same levels of confidence, completed the same project tasks, and were similarly satisfied with their teams), the observational study implied that the student-reported data may not be telling the whole story. Given the difficult team dynamics observed in the student team (but not reported by students), findings suggest that difficult gender dynamics may go unrecognized by students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper employs the automatic scoring of short essays as a novel way to determine pre-service teachers’ knowledge of and attitudes toward computational thinking (CT) from their written reflections. Implications about designing CT courses for pre-service teachers are discussed. Background: CT is an essential 21st-century competency that supports the development of problem-solving skills. Inspired by computing science problem-solving practices, CT should transcend disciplines, but few universities or colleges include CT courses or CT content in their core courses. It is also difficult to know what pre-service teachers think about CT and their role in promoting it. Research Questions: Do pre-service teachers’ coding reflections reveal any important information about their knowledge of, skills in, and attitudes toward CT? Methodology: Traditional qualitative techniques based on human raters are impractical in analyzing hundreds of essays. Topic modeling, an unsupervised machine learning modeling technique, was employed to extract topical features from participants’ reflections. In one section of an undergraduate Introduction to Educational Technology course offered at a large university in Western Canada, n = 139 pre-service teachers wrote a short reflection on their experience following a 20 h Accelerated Intro to Computer Science Code.org course. Topics were identified by analyzing contextual trends in participants’ written reflections. Findings: Results showed that pre-service teachers’ reflections included CT concepts, practices, and perspectives. Specifically, participants connected the coding activity to prior knowledge and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer science (CS) is becoming an increasingly diverse domain. This paper reports on an initiative designed to introduce underrepresented populations to computing using an eclectic, multifaceted approach. As part of a yearlong computing course, students engage in Maker activities, participatory simulations, and computing projects that foreground the social and collaborative aspects of CS. Collectively, these activities are designed to introduce learners to the growing diversity of what CS looks like in the 21st century. This paper lays out the practical and theoretical motivations for the Computational Thinking for Girls (CT4G) project, specifically highlighting the use of Making through physical and social computing as ways to engage students in CS. A snapshot of one activity from the program is provided—Wearing the Web—in which students use open-hardware programmable badges to explore the underlying structure and technology that enables the Internet. Data from the first year of the CT4G program are presented to show the positive effects that this diverse introduction to CS is having on the students with respect to their attitudes toward CS. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on some vexed issues in the preparation of computer science (CS) curricula, including the systematization of the different areas of the technology, the definition of topics and subtopics to teach, their distribution across the various computing courses, and the relationships between them. It is a common opinion that such didactical difficulties are caused by the fast evolution of information technology. To show how this opinion has little ground, a comparison is made between the methods adopted by educators of informatics and of electronics; in fact, also the electronic technology advances at a similarly fast pace. This analysis brings evidence how the experts in electronics have a well-described theoretical basis that can be logically mapped and progressively taught to give a clear understanding of the field. The same cannot be said in CS. Educators in this field are not aided by underpinning theories in an effective manner. Experts have a mass of concepts at hand, but no network of logical connections to order them. This paper does not present a practical solution to these educational difficulties, but observes how the missing assistance of computer theorists may result in unnecessary expenditure of energy and considerable additional effort. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contribution: A conceptual model for task allocation among student teams in project-based learning (PBL) is proposed in this paper, along with a discussion on ways gender can affect teams’ apportioning of roles in inequitable ways in STEM PBL. Background: Studies find that men and women report taking on different roles in PBL projects, and that there is a relationship between team gender breakdown and students’ satisfaction with PBL teams, with teams less happy with the inclusion of more women. Both male and female students on teams with two or more women report lower team satisfaction than men on teams of just men, or men and women on teams with a single woman Research Questions: How do students self-select, negotiate, and allocate tasks on PBL teams? How does past PBL experience influence task allocation? How does gender affect task allocation? Methodology: First-year students (N = 60) completed reflections about task assignment during a semester-long PBL experience. Findings: Individual student characteristics that are related to gender—including interests, skills, experiences, and self-efficacy—interact with students’ goal orientations to lead to individual preferences regarding tasks. Ultimate task allocations are distributed in a non-gender-neutral way following individual preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper shows how significantly computer science instructors can disagree when grading code writing questions in introductory computer science (CS1) exams. Certain solutions are considered “very good” by some instructors and “very bad” by others. The study identifies four factors as possible contributors to such differences between graders: 1) disagreement on the role of syntax in CS1; 2) absence of objective measures for the seriousness of logic errors; 3) variance in how rubrics are constructed; and 4) the use of subjective judgement while grading. Background: Code writing questions are widely used in CS1 exams. Understanding differences in how graders approach such questions can help the CS education community become more informed about how to design valid assessments for summative and formative purposes. Research Questions: Do graders differ significantly in how they score student programs? What are the main factors to which differences between graders could be attributed? Methodology: A number of CS1 instructors and TAs were asked to score pieces of code resembling student solutions to CS1 exam questions, and were asked to answer open ended questions on how they approach grading in CS1 exams. Responses were then analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings: There is no consensus on how code writing questions in CS1 exams should be graded. Differences in opinion on how many points to award can be very significant, even for very simple programs and between graders in the same institution. Some graders assign grades that do not necessarily agree with how many points they believe the student solution is worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper provides evidence that computational creativity exercises (CCEs) can increase engineering students’ learning in introductory computer science (CS1) courses. Its main contribution is its more rigorous treatment/control group research design that allows testing for causal influences of CCEs on student learning and performance. Background: Computer science (CS) courses are critical foundational courses for engineering students. CCEs that merge computational and creative thinking have been shown to increase achievement and learning of engineering and nonengineering students in CS1 courses, but previous research has used quasi- and non-experimental designs. Intended Outcomes: CCEs are intended to improve students’ learning of CS1 content and problem-solving ability by fostering computational creativity. Application Design: CCEs can improve student learning and can be used to supplement other evidence-based instructional practices. Findings: Propensity score matching was used to create equivalent treatment and control groups; results show that students in the CCE implementation section had higher scores on a CS knowledge test than students in the control section, but not higher self-efficacy for their CS knowledge. Focus group and open-ended survey questions indicated that students had mixed reactions to the CCEs, with about half the students seeing them as improving their learning, understanding, and ability to apply CS in their engineering field. Responses also reinforced the importance of fully incorporating CCEs in courses and aligning them with course topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: An approach is presented to provide contextualized feedback for students using a project management (PM) tool. This approach covers the ten PM knowledge areas, guiding students through the planning of software projects. Background: Because software PM is unfeasible without the support of a PM tool there is a growing demand that these tools be taught in the higher education computer courses. Hence, several approaches already have been proposed to improve this teaching, such as educational PM tools or simulators, which facilitate the application of specific PM techniques and the treatment of their results. Another approach to improve the teaching of PM tools is instructional feedback, but little information is as yet available on how to provide instructional feedback when teaching software PM. Intended Outcomes: Instructional feedback, essential to helping students to learn, is based on an evaluation of their actions and decisions. To take advantage of this instructional approach, this paper proposes an instructional feedback technique to be employed in an instructional unit (IU) teaching PM tools aligned with the project management body of knowledge. Application Design: This technique was evaluated through an experiment carried out in undergraduate computer courses. Control and experiential groups were exposed to the same IU, with only the experiential group using the instructional feedback technique. Findings: The proposed feedback technique contributes to student learning, meeting students’ need for better explanations to acquire a comprehensive understanding of PM theory and its practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Internet era, students have increasingly lost interest in traditional lectures; as a consequence, their learning motivation and exam performance have decreased. The widespread adoption of learner-centered teaching methods that address this issue faces certain barriers, including: 1) the significant faculty effort necessary to prepare e-learning materials; 2) significant extra time required for active online communication with students; 3) student resistance to taking an active role in their education; and 4) lecturers’ common belief that learner-centered teaching activities do not allow discussion of all the required topics. This paper presents a case study based on one offering of an introductory digital systems course taught with a combination of learner-centered strategies selected to overcome these barriers and improve student performance. These measures included: 1) improving the student-teacher relationship; 2) applying intriguing, inductive, and counterintuitive approaches to introducing new concepts; 3) adopting puzzle-based quizzes integrated with peer instruction; 4) using an audience response system; 5) replacing certain lectures with tutorials; 6) reducing course duration; and 7) using a graphics tablet. The results obtained demonstrate significant improvements in lecture attendance and in student performance. The author believes that the approach presented here can benefit other engineering educators in similar courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and analyzes results of two Delphi processes that polled cybersecurity experts to rate cybersecurity topics based on importance, difficulty, and timelessness. These ratings can be used to identify core concepts–cross-cutting ideas that connect knowledge in the discipline. The first Delphi process identified core concepts that should be learned in any first course on cybersecurity. The second identified core concepts that any cybersecurity professional should know upon graduating from college. Despite the rapidly growing demand for cybersecurity professionals, it is not clear what defines foundational cybersecurity knowledge. Initial data from the Delphi processes lay a foundation for defining the core concepts of the field and, consequently, provide a common starting point to accelerate the development of rigorous cybersecurity education practices. These results provide a foundation for developing evidence-based educational cybersecurity assessment tools that will identify and measure effective methods for teaching cybersecurity. The Delphi results can also be used to inform the development of curricula, learning exercises, and other educational materials and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational thinking and creative thinking are valuable tools both within and outside of computer science (CS). The goal of the project discussed here is to increase students’ achievement in CS courses through a series of computational creativity exercises (CCEs). In this paper, the framework of CCEs is described, and the results of two separate studies on their impact on student achievement are presented. Students in introductory CS courses completed CCEs as part of those courses. Students in Study 1 came from a variety of programs, and students in Study 2 were engineering majors. A profiling approach was used to test whether the impact of the CCEs could be accounted for by differences in students’ motivated and self-regulated engagement. Overall, CCEs had positive impacts on students’ grades and knowledge test scores, and although there were differences in achievement across the profiles, the impact of the CCEs was generally consistent across profiles. The CCEs appear to be a promising way to increase student achievement in introductory CS courses. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of a constructivist 21st-century learning model to implement a week-long workshop, delivered as a “hackathon,” to encourage preuniversity teenagers to pursue careers in STEM, with a particular emphasis on computer science. For Irish preuniversity students, their experience of computing can vary from word processing to foundational programming, and while many schools are looking to introduce more ICT into the classroom, many students are left with a narrow view of what computer science is all about. Twenty-one students participated in the workshop and completed pre- and post-surveys, and a free word association exercise in the areas of computing and careers in computing. Analysis revealed that students’ motivation to learn about the design process, programming, inputs and outputs, and wearable technology (wearables)/Internet of Things (IoT) increased following participation. There were also increases in confidence in inputs and outputs and wearables/IoT following participation, as well as changes in the computing word associations, with students associating computing more with computer programming terms rather than general terms such as the Internet. The findings suggest that the combination of a hackathon event and a model for 21st century learning can be effective in motivating and increasing the self-efficacy of preuniversity teenagers in a number of emerging technological contexts such as IoT and wearables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a case study analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of using project-based learning (PBL) combined with collaborative learning (CL) and industry best practices, integrated with information communication technologies, open-source software, and open-source hardware tools, in a specialized microcontroller and embedded systems engineering Master's course. In addition to addressing industry requirements in both contents and methodology, the course develops capabilities and competencies in problem solving, independent learning, teamwork, and technical knowledge. Since PBL methodology alone does not ensure teamwork, it was complemented with CL. Design review meetings (as described in IEC 61160), deliverables, and organizational resources were also introduced to mirror industry demands. This structure integrated course content and student academic achievement in a simulated industrial environment. The course had students build a modular management system for home appliances, implementing control software on the “Arduino” open-source platform, as well as using wireless communications. The results show that teaching, learning, and student assessment processes can be improved by using PBL with CL. In addition, the introduction of industry practices, such us peer review meetings, brings academia closer to a real-world context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Database technology affects many disciplines beyond computer science and business. This paper describes two animations developed with images and color that visually and dynamically introduce fundamental relational database concepts and querying to students of many majors. The goal is for educators in diverse academic disciplines to incorporate the animations in their existing courses in order to meet their pedagogical needs. The introduction of the animations was assessed and evaluated within several contexts, including non-majors courses offered by computer scientists as well as a course on computational molecular biology. The evaluation indicated that student knowledge of fundamental database concepts improved significantly with the use of the courseware. The animations provide visual learners with an engaging method to learn the topics presented with the ability to replay the dynamic presentation. Overall, the evaluation indicates the accessibility of database topics across the disciplines as well as the specific concepts that need further elaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a knowledge-based strategy for recommending educational resources—worked problems, exercises, quiz questions, and lecture notes—to learners in the first two courses in the introductory sequence of a computer science major (CS1 and CS2). The goal of the recommendation strategy is to provide support for personalized access to the resources that exist in open educational repositories. The strategy uses: 1) a description of the resources based on metadata standards enriched by ontology-based semantic indexing, and 2) contextual information about the user (her knowledge of that particular field of learning). The results of an experimental analysis of the strategy's performance are presented. These demonstrate that the proposed strategy offers a high level of personalization and can be adapted to the user. An application of the strategy to a repository of computer science open educational resources was well received by both educators and students and had promising effects on the student performance and dropout rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardware-based courses in computer science studies require much effort from both students and teachers. The most important part of students' learning is attending in person and actively working on laboratory exercises on hardware equipment. This paper deals with a specific group of students, those who are marginalized by not being able to regularly attend lessons and perform the laboratory exercises. This group of “busy students” includes older students, and those who travel, are employed or are parents. In particular it describes how such students achieved impressive results in a hardware-based course by using Open Educational Resources (OER). These facilitated students' learning process and gave busy students the opportunity to organize their learning time so as to work on the hardware courses remotely from home when they had time and opportunity. The results of the evaluation show significant improvements, both in grade distribution and course throughput, after implementing the new Open Educational Resources approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]