Jan Erik Moström

Putting threshold concepts into context in computer science education

This paper describes Threshold Concepts, a theory of learning that distinguishes core concepts whose characteristics can make them troublesome in learning. With an eye to applying this theory in computer science, we consider this notion in the context of related topics in computer science education.

Can graduating students design software systems

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.

Learning computer science: perceptions, actions and roles

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 teachers beliefs regarding student learning difficulties both extends and complements existing efforts to develop a more student-centred computing pedagogy.

Threshold concepts and threshold skills in computing

Threshold concepts can be used to both organize disciplinary knowledge and explain why students have difficulties at certain points in the curriculum. Threshold concepts transform a students view of the discipline; before being learned, they can block a students progress. In this paper, we propose that in computing, skills, in addition to concepts, can sometimes be thresholds. Some students report finding skills more difficult than concepts. We discuss some computing skills that may be thresholds and compare threshold skills and threshold concepts.

Liminal spaces and learning computing

‘Threshold concepts’ are concepts that, among other things, transform the way a student looks at a discipline. Although the term ‘threshold’ might suggest that the transformation occurs at a specific point in time, an ‘aha’ moment, it seems more common (at least in computing) that a longer time period is required. This time period is referred to as the ‘liminal space’. In this paper, we summarise our findings concerning how computing students experience the liminal space and discuss how this might affect teaching. Most of our findings so far relate to software engineering. As it is likely that similar liminal spaces occur in other engineering disciplines, these findings have relevance across engineering education.

Evaluating OO example programs for CS1

Example programs play an important role in learning to program. They work as templates, guidelines, and inspiration for learners when developing their own programs. It is therefore important to provide learners with high quality examples. In this paper, we discuss properties of example programs that might affect the teaching and learning of object-oriented programming. Furthermore, we present an evaluation instrument for example programs and report on initial experiences of its application to a selection of examples from popular introductory programming textbooks.

Categorizing student software designs: Methods, results, and implications

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.

Student transformations: are they computer scientists yet?

We examine the changes in the ways computing students view their field as they learn, as reported by the students themselves in short written biographies. In many ways, these changes result in students thinking and acting more like computer scientists and identifying more with the computing community. Most of the changes are associated with programming and software engineering, rather than theoretical computer science, however.

DCER: sharing empirical computer science education data

Data sharing is common, and sometimes even required, in other disciplines. Creating a mechanism for data sharing in computer science education research will benefit both individual researchers and the community. While it is easy to say that data sharing is desirable, it is much more difficult to make it a practical reality. This paper reports on an examination of the issues involved by researchers who gathered at a one-day NSF-sponsored workshop held in connection with SIGCSE 2008. We outline the advantages and challenges of developing a repository, show how the challenges have been addressed by repositories in other fields, describe a possible prototype system for empirical computer science education data, and discuss how to move the project forward.

Debugging assistance for novices: a video repository

This paper reports on the efforts of an ITiCSE 2007 working group with the aim of producing a publicly available, searchable, tagable, Web 2.0-style repository of short debugging videos. This repository may be accessed from http://debug.csi.muohio.edu/. The videos are aimed at novice Java programmers who may need help debugging when none is available (e.g. in the middle of the night before the homework is due). However, it could also be used by instructors of introductory programming. Here we discuss our motivation in creating this repository and detail the process we followed and the products we produced.