Maya Satratzemi

Introducing Secondary Education Students to Algorithms and Programming

In Greece, the development of the teaching of Information Technology (IT) in schools has been greatly influenced by the rapid development of technology, making IT literacy a priority for all individuals. Consequently, the teaching of algorithms and programming, with the ulterior motive of teaching modeling as well as problem solving, has been greatly limited in Secondary Education. However, we strongly believe that algorithms and programming constitute an important intellectual tool and should be included in basic education. In any case, both the research literature findings, as well as, our own experience confirm the fact that novice programmers come up against many mental obstacles in their attempts to understand the functioning of programs or the construction of algorithms. In order to deal with these difficulties and successfully teach the elementary concepts of algorithms and programming, we have developed didactic scenarios, which are based on specially designed educational software. In conjunction with this, we are attempting to develop a program for the systematic training of those students who will become IT teachers in Secondary or Primary Education. The most significant findings of our research are summarized as follows: (a) The development of educational software and its experimental use in the teaching process allow us to formulate several general rules related to the specific didactic characteristics, which these environments should include. (b) Educational software is effective only when it is incorporated within the framework of the didactic scenarios that the teacher organizes and which are supported by the software. (c) Teachers do not spontaneously use educational software in the context of this rationale. Therefore, specific training is required so that they adopt and use such software in didactic scenarios.

Adaptivity in ProPer: An Adaptive SCORM Compliant LMS

Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems provide personalized educational content to learners. However most of them do not support the functionality of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and the reusability of their courses is hard work. On the other hand some LMS support SCORM specifications but do not provide adaptive features. This article presents ProPer, a LMS that conforms to SCORM specifications and provides adaptive hypermedia courses. ProPer manages and delivers SCORM compliant courses and personalizes them according to learner’s knowledge, goals and personal characteristics. In addition learner’s progress and behavior is monitored and useful feedback is returned to tutors. ProPer will be used for an adaptive Java Programming course distribution to CS1 students. Statistical feedback will be gathered by tutors in order to improve course effectiveness. The technology background is briefly given and the system’s architecture and functionality are analyzed.

WIPE: a programming environment for novices

This paper presents an overview of the design principles and the evaluation of a new programming environment, WIPE (Web Integrated Programming Environment), designed specifically to teach novices the fundamentals of programming. The environment is designed for use in secondary education as a first programming course, in order to help students become familiar with the main programming concepts.

Towards a new massive multiplayer online role playing game for introductory programming

Successful computer programming education is facing significant problems even nowadays for both students and teachers. To this end, the specificities of those difficulties and the corresponding causes continue to be an ongoing topic of research. According to relevant case studies, these relate to the complex concepts of computer programming as well as the lack of motivation by students to achieve the given goals. On the other hand, the emerging field of Games Based Learning is gradually delivering games that are applied in a series of educational contexts. In this paper, we aim to initially investigate the educational games developed for and used in the computer programming domain and review to which level they address the aforementioned difficulties. Related work includes a number of games that have been developed towards this goal. However, even though they seem promising examples, they lack features that would allow them to successfully underpin computer programming learning by facing the majority of the identified problems. To this end, we propose a new, advanced Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that includes the facilitating and positive features identified in existing solutions and incorporates missing elements that will bring forth a new generation of educational games for introductory computer programming.

Adaptivity in a SCORM compliant adaptive educational hypermedia system

This paper presents a Learning Management System (LMS) that provides adaptive hypermedia courses adopting SCORM standard and its specifications. Its main aim is to manage and deliver SCORM compliant courses, adapt those courses accordingly to the learner knowledge and individual characteristics and monitor users progress and course effectiveness providing feedback to the tutors. It is going to be used for the distribution of an adaptive Java programming course which will provide useful statistical feedback to the tutors. The focus of the paper is on the systems architecture and in adaptation technologies that were used.

Re-designing an OOP course based on BlueJ

In this paper we present our findings on teaching Object Oriented Programming (OOP) with BlueJ in the context of a one-semester programming course. Specifically, we present the evolution of the course, results from its evaluation and proposals for a more effective teaching of OOP. Our proposals focus on the way that the features of BlueJ, the accompanying textbook and the well-known guidelines for teaching object orientation with Java presented by the team of BlueJ should be used, in order to avoid some underlying pitfalls.

Evaluating the Effects of Scripted Distributed Pair Programming on Student Performance and Participation

The results presented in this paper contribute to research on two different areas of teaching methods: distributed pair programming (DPP) and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). An evaluation study of a DPP system that supports collaboration scripts was conducted over one semester of a computer science course. Seventy-four students participated in the study and used the DPP model to solve programming assignments in pairs, rather than individually. Students were divided into two cohorts in order to examine how best to distribute programming tasks to students, to maximize learning outcomes. The results suggest that while the use of DPP improves pass rates and gets positive feedback from students, the use of collaboration scripts yields equal task contributions from each of the student pair. For a small number of students, overall performance was improved by the adaptive assignment of programming activities, designed to engage students equally in diverse roles and activities.

CMX: The Effects of an Educational MMORPG on Learning and Teaching Computer Programming

Computer programming has for decades posed several difficulties for students of all educational levels. A number of teaching approaches have been proposed over the years but none seems to fulfil the needs of students nowadays. Students use computers mainly for playing games and the Internet and as quite a few researchers state this aspect of computers should be taken into account in the way we educate them. Towards this direction, this paper aims to examine the effects of using an educational Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) on teaching and learning computer programming. The educational features of an MMORPG called CMX are presented along with a design framework that was devised taking into account previous work in designing educational games. The effects of CMX on teaching and learning computer programming are assessed through a study with first-year undergraduate students. Seventy six students used CMX over a period of five weeks for learning various procedural programming concepts. Students evaluated various aspects of CMX by filling in a questionnaire that was based on an evaluation framework, which was devised in accordance with the design framework of CMX. Moreover, the results of a midterm exam that took place prior to using CMX and students’ accomplishments in the context of CMX were recorded and analyzed. The results show that the majority of the students was entertained by playing the game while learning, and felt motivated to continue based on the games scenario due to the variety of activities included. In regards to the students’ performance, a pre-test and a post-test were carried out in the experimental group, i.e., the participants of this study, and the control group, i.e., students of the course that continued to get taught the same concepts and performed the same assignments as the experimental group, but traditionally. The pre-test and post-test analysis of the performance results for both groups showed that the majority of the students in the experimental group increased their performance in computer programming. Furthermore, students stated they had a positive attitude in regards to re-using CMX in the future in order to learn additional programming concepts. The positive results of this study pave the way for CMX being used in the classroom and expanding the games functionalities that will further increase students’ performance and support teachers in delivering the required knowledge. Moreover, the work reported in this paper offers game designers and teachers methodological and empirical results for game-based learning in such a difficult domain as is computer programming. What is more, the design and evaluation frameworks presented are general enough that they can be easily adjusted and/or extended for designing and assessing educational games in other domains as well.

Applying Learning Styles to SCORM Compliant Courses

This paper proposes a general framework to develop SCORM compliant courses that provide adaptation according to user learning style. The SCORM standard as well as some of the most popular learning style models and adaptive systems that implement them are briefly presented. The general framework is introduced and a case study with some evaluation outcomes is discussed.

Post's Machine: A Didactic Microworld as an Introduction to Formal Programming

Although formal programming is considered a recognised programming model, many avoid teaching it because of its very high mental cost. For that reason we developed a “microscopic” environment based on Emil Posts theoretical machine as an introduction to formal methods of programming and in the framework of an introductory computer science course.In this paper, we present a small formal system for the development and simultaneous verification of algorithms; we give an example of problem solving in this environment; we present a small existing software simulating Posts machine; we propose two modules to facilitate the work in this environment; and finally, we present the didactic uses of Posts machine as an introduction to formal methods.