Barbara Sabitzer

Brain-based Programming

Learning languages can be hard. As the yearly results of the course “Introduction to structured and object-based programming” at our university show, learning the first programming language might be even harder. Many students complain about the difficulty of the course and fail in the exam. With the desire to support the students and enhance the learning outcomes we initiated the project “Brain-based Programming”. The basic question is: “How can learning to program be made easier?” The answer may come from the interdisciplinary field of neurodidactics that offers many general suggestions for improving teaching and designing teaching material. But concrete examples for computer science education are scarce, and empirical research is still missing. This was the impetus for the project “Brain-based Programming” that aims at (1) creating and evaluating a brain-based script for beginners in Java programming and at (2) implementing and evaluating brain-based teaching methods in the programming course. In the pilot phase we conducted a didactic experiment in one of seven parallel groups and combined brain-based teaching methods and exercises. The results demonstrate the success of the experiment and support the hypothesis that learning is more effective when it considers how the brain learns and follows neurodidactical principles.

Teaching Software Engineering in schools on the right time to introduce Software Engineering concepts

Software is everywhere - be it in mobile phones, in washing machines, or in cars. With it, the importance of Software Engineering is uncontested, and Software Engineering (SE) is taught all over the world: at Universities, at Colleges, and recently also at High Schools. There are international Software Engineering curricula, standards, and certificates, but there is no manifestation of Software Engineering (and related practices) in the course syllabi at primary and secondary schools. This contribution raises the question about the ideal time to start with Software Engineering at schools and reports on some first answer and lessons learned of an experiment introducing Software Engineering principles in the 3rd grade of a vocational high school (higher secondary school).

A media-reduced approach towards informatics at primary level

At the moment, informatics education stretches downward to reach primary education. This article emphasizes computational thinking, focuses upon goals of primary education and unveils how to connect to existing teaching and learning patterns when integrating computational thinking into primary education. Furthermore, a framework is sketched to combine computational thinking with computational doing in a media-reduced way.

Informatics-Lab: Attracting Primary School Pupils for Computer Science

Technology has a deep impact on everyday life of most people in todays society. Informatics is a basic element of this evolution and is. therefore getting more and more important for education, too. To introduce children of all ages to different topics of informatics, the Regional Educational Competence Centre for Informatics in Carinthia, Austria, organized a four-week lasting Informatics-Lab. During their holidays in July 2014, children were able to visit our university, participate in workshops and get a first or a deeper impression of topics like encryption, operating systems, networks or modelling. What distinguished this project from other labs was that the children learned from trainees aged between 16 and 19 years as well as from their peers. Furthermore, trainees and visitors developed new teaching material on their own. This was an important element of the project as it considered different learning concepts like learning by teaching. The lab got positive feedback from both, children and parents. A pre-post comparison showed that the project had positive effects on the interest as well as on the attitude towards informatics. This paper gives some background information about the learning concept and an overview of the activities and stations. Furthermore, the results from an empirical

Brain-based programming: a new concept for computer science education

Learning a programming language is hard as the yearly results of an introductory course at our university show. For many students it even seems to be an insurmountable hurdle. With the desire to support students and enhance the learning outcomes, the concept of Brain-based Programming was developed and successfully implemented in one of seven parallel programming courses.

The Teaching-Learning-Lab - Digital Literacy and Computational Thinking for Everyone.

As advancement of the already successful Informatics Lab in 2016 a Teaching-Learning-Lab (TLL) was implemented with the main aim of supporting all teacher education departments of our university to teach and practice digital literacy and computational thinking as “fundamental skill for everyone” (Wing, 2006) in different ways. Our support is based on three pillars: equipment, know-how and research. Scientists, (future) teachers and students can use the rooms (creative, experimental and observation lab), the technical equipment and instructional technology for planning, designing, holding and/or observing and analyzing teaching units. We offer workshops for digital literacy and computational thinking in and for different subjects. Our main research focuses on the connection of computational thinking to other disciplines and its impact on problem solving and text comprehension. Furthermore, the Teaching-Learning-Lab offers research possibilities for scientists and students in different areas concerning teaching and learning. We enhance cooperation between schools and university and give support in finding research questions for master or PhD-theses in didactics, conducting teaching experiments. The paper describes challenges and opportunities of the Teaching-Learning-Lab in fostering the digital literacy competences and computational thinking of

Brain-based teaching in computer science: neurodidactical proposals for effective teaching

Brain-based teaching is neither a method nor a concept. It is rather a way of teaching that tries to support the learning and memory process in all phases from lesson design over input and practice up to the transfer of knowledge and competencies in real situations. The proposals for brain-based teaching come from neurodidactics or educational neuroscience that combines findings of brain and memory research, didactics, pedagogy and psychology. This paper aims at presenting concepts and methods that can facilitate learning and proposals for designing computer science lessons by considering the functioning of the brain and the memory.

On competence-based learning and neuroscience

Competence-orientation and personalization promise sustainable learning. But practical experiences with standards-based and personalized informatics education indicate that sustainable learning does not happen by itself, though. This contribution describes attempts to introduce competence-oriented learning into informatics lessons, addresses the observed lack of sustainability by pointing at the structure of informatics learning content and seeks for further explanations among the findings of neurodidactics. Referring to existing pedagogical patterns for computer science education we conclude that guidelines for sustainable learning at least have to regard considerations of informatics didactics as well as recommendations of neuroscience.