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This paper discusses two qualitative research methods, phenomenography and grounded theory. We introduce both methods' data collection and analysis processes and the type or results you may get at the end by using examples from computing education research. We highlight some of the similarities and differences between the aim, data collection and analysis phases and the type of resulting outcomes of these methods. We also discuss the challenges and threats the both methods may pose to the researcher. We conclude that while aimed at tackling different types of research questions, both of these methods provide computing education researchers a useful tool in their research method toolbox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides insight into how computing majors experience the process of doing programming assignments in their first programming course. This grounded theory study sheds light on the various processes and contexts through which students constantly assess their self-efficacy as a programmer. The data consists of a series of four interviews conducted with a purposeful sample of nine computer science majors in a research intensive state university in the United States. Use of the constant comparative method elicited two forms of results. First, we identified six stages of doing a programming assignment. Analysis captures the dimensional variation in students' experiences with programming assignments on a detailed level. We identified a core category resulting from students' reflected emotions in conjunction with self-efficacy assessment. We provide a descriptive model of how computer science majors build their self-efficacy perceptions, reported via four narratives. Our key findings are that some students reflect negative views of their efficacy, even after having a positive programming experience and that in other situations, students having negative programming experiences still have a positive outlook on their efficacy. We consider these findings in light of possible languages and support structures for introductory programming courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the efficiency of the Ubiquitous Presenter (UP) system developed at the University of California in San Diego, California. It states that the UP system enables instructors to ink prepared digital material in class. It mentions that the system supports in-class interaction via a web interface, and allows the instructor to review submitted slides to the class for them to focus on the discussion. Moreover, the system can be used by having Internet-accessible machines.

The authors examined student and faculty opinions regarding the use of detailed learning goals in three courses. Students reported the use of learning goals to be very positive, aiding them with studying, in lectures, and in determining the important material to learn. Likewise, faculty indicated that using learning goals was a positive experience, especially for communicating course material to students and other faculty and for creating course assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on responses to a series of four questions designed to identify pre-existing abilities related to debugging and troubleshooting experiences of novice students before they begin programming instruction. The focus of these questions include general troubleshooting, bug location, exploring unfamiliar environments, and describing students' real life troubleshooting experiences. We find that the common sense experience of students related to debugging is often at odds with the needs for debugging programs. Student troubleshooting experiences recognize real world non-determinism and rarely require undoing an attempted fix. Based on student answers, we shed light on some specific frustrations of instructors and make a set of recommendations for teaching, including addressing the difference between finding an error and fixing it, modeling the formation of multiple hypotheses, and encouraging students to apply domain knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the intersection of regional and social dialects in the U.S. Inclusion of the historical account of language; Components of Linguistic Atlas; Functions of lexicographer, dialectologists and sociolinguists.

Presents information on a study which analyzed high school, family and community partnerships. Methods; Results; Discussion.

Increases in instruction level parallelism are needed to exploit the potential parallelism available in future wide issue architectures. Predicated execution is an architectural mechanism that increases instruction level parallelism by removing branches and allowing simultaneous execution of multiple paths of control, only committing instructions from the correct path. In order for the compiler to expose and use such parallelism, traditional compiler data-flow and path analysis needs to be extended to predicated code. In this paper, we motivate the need for renaming and for predicates that reflect path information. We present Predicated Static Single Assignment (PSSA) which uses renaming and introduces Full -Path Predicates to remove false dependences and enable aggressive predicated optimization and instruction scheduling. We demonstrate the usefulness of PSSA for Predicated Speculation and Control Height Reduction. These two predicated code optimizations used during instruction scheduling reduce the dependence length of the critical paths through a predicated region. Our results show that using PSSA to enable speculation and control height reduction reduces execution time from 12 to 68%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls into question established wisdom regarding regional and social dialect study of the English language in the United States. Tendency to be wary of phenomena not quantitatively significant; Role of electronic mail in the authors' research; Pronunciation of 'suite'; Sentences in need+V-en form.

Investigates the history of the pronunciation of the word `sut'. Use of historical dictionaries, glossaries and usage guides; Use of anecdotal narratives to support kinds of use; Complex relationships between marked regional dialect items and social values; Initial uses of `suite' in English; Documented appearance of `suit' for furniture.

Examines the use of want followed by the past participle of a verb (want + V-en) in modern American English. Definition in Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE); Origin of want + v-en; Sociological transparency in the usage of want + V-en; Syntactic and semantical analysis of want + V-en; Variations in the structure of a want + V-en sentence.

The article presents the poem "GIVING OVER," by Beth Simon. First Line: On the quietest day in June, Last Line: leave only clean limbs to the sky.

This phenomenographic study opens the classroom door to investigate teachers' experiences of students learning difficult computing topics. Three distinct themes are identified and analysed. Why do students succeed or fail to learn these concepts? What actions do teachers perceive will ameliorate the difficulties facing students? Who is responsible, and for what, in the learning situation? Theoretical work on threshold concepts and conceptual change deals with mechanisms and processes associated with learning difficult material [Meyer, J. and Land, R., 2005. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49 (3), 373-388; Entwistle, N., 2007. Conceptions of learning and the experience of understanding: thresholds, contextual influences, and knowledge objects. In: S. Vosniadou, A. Baltas and X. Vamvakoussi, eds. Re-framing the conceptual change approach in learning and instruction. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, chap. 11]. With this work as a background, we concentrate on the perceptions of teachers. Where do teachers feel that the difficulties lie when studying the troublesome knowledge in computing? Student and teacher-centric views of teaching reported in other literature are also to be seen in our results. The first two categories in the 'what' and 'who' themes are teacher-centric. Higher level categories in all themes show increasingly learner centred conceptions of the instructional role. However, the nature of the categories in the 'why' theme reveals a new dimension dealing with teacher beliefs specific to the nature of troublesome knowledge in computing. A number of prior studies in tertiary teaching concentrate on approaches to teaching [Trigwell, K. and Prosser, M., 2004. Development and use of the approaches to teaching inventory. Educational Psychology Review, 16 (4), 409-424], and attitudes to scholarship of teaching and learning [Ashwin, P. and Trigwell, K., 2004. Investigating educational development. In: Making sense of staff and educational development, 117-131]. Our focus on learning difficult topics extends this work, investigating teacher conceptions of causality in relation to learning difficulties. We argue that teacher conceptions of enabling factors, for learning difficult computing topics, can act to limit the nature and scope of academics' pedagogical responses. Improved awareness of teacher's beliefs regarding student learning difficulties both extends and complements existing efforts to develop a more student-centred computing pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature related to the learning and teaching of debugging computer programs. Debugging is an important skill that continues to be both difficult for novice programmers to learn and challenging for computer science educators to teach. These challenges persist despite a wealth of important research on the subject dating back as far as the mid 1970s. Although the tools and languages novices use for writing programs today are notably different from those employed decades earlier, the basic problem-solving and pragmatic skills necessary to debug them effectively are largely similar. Hence, an understanding of the previous work on debugging can offer computer science educators insights into how to improve contemporary learning and teaching of debugging and may suggest directions for future research into this important area. This overview of the debugging literature is organized around four questions relevant to computer science educators and education researchers: What causes bugs to occur? What types of bugs occur? What is the debugging process? How can we improve the learning and teaching of debugging? We conclude with suggestions on using the existing literature both to facilitate pedagogical improvements to debugging education and to offer guidance for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debugging is often difficult and frustrating for novices. Yet because students typically debug outside the classroom and often in isolation, instructors rarely have the opportunity to closely observe students while they debug. This paper describes the details of an exploratory study of the debugging skills and behaviors of contemporary novice Java programmers. Based on a modified replication of Katz and Anderson's study of novices, we sought to broadly survey the modern landscape of novice debugging abilities. As such, this study reports general quantitative results and fills in the picture with qualitative detail from a relatively small, but varied sample. Comprehensive interviews involving both a programming and a debugging task, followed by a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire, were conducted with 21 CS2 students at seven colleges and universities. While many subjects successfully debugged a representative set of typical CS1 bugs, there was a great deal of variation in their success at the programming and debugging tasks. Most of the students who were good debuggers were good novice programmers, although not all of the good programmers were successful at debugging. Students employed a variety of strategies to find 70% of all bugs and of the bugs they found they were able to fix 97% of them. They had the most difficulty with malformed statements, such as arithmetic errors and incorrect loop conditions. Our results confirm many findings from previous studies (some quite old) - most notably that once students find bugs, they can fix them. However, the results also suggest that some changes have occurred in the student population, particularly an increased use of debugging tools and online resources, as well as the use of pattern matching, which has not previously been reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]