Pat Fung

Computer attitudes in an English secondary school

Abstract Recent research has shown that there are consistent differences between males and females and between students and teachers in their attitudes towards computers. Specifically they reveal that there are likely to be gender differences with male students having more favourable attitudes towards computers than female students but that those differences are unlikely to be mirrored in the school teaching staff. Research has also shown that students are likely to have more favourable attitudes to computers than the staff. The present paper is an attempt to find out to what extent these findings apply to the staff and first year students in an English secondary school. Both groups were given a computer attitude questionnaire based on previously published scales [1–3]. The results are in line with the findings of previous research and are discussed in terms of their likely impact on an ongoing study into the introduction of high access to computers in the school.

The Use and Effectiveness of Palmtop Computers in Education

This paper reports how palmtop computers were used in an English secondary school over the course of a year. In particular, it concentrates on the perceived effectiveness of such computers in an educational setting, and on how teachers’ and students’ knowledge and use of “content-free” applications increased over that time. The benefits and potential problems with this new technology are discussed along with the consequences it has for classroom and school organisation.

Software that assists learning within a complex abstract domain: the use of constraint and consequentiality as learning mechanisms

This paper describes a research project into undergraduates’ use of a software tool to learn symbolic logic—a complex abstract domain that has been shown to be intimidating for students. The software allows the students to manipulate proofs in certain ways and then calculates the consequences of their actions. A research method has been developed that allowed students’ use of this tool to be modelled, and this model was then used to identify, refine and create visual cues that provide support for students’ reasoning. The focus of this paper is the role of the software as an artefact to aid students’ visualisation of reasoning processes rather than the logic itself. The main mechanisms by which this visualisation is supported are the imposition of constraints on the actions available and the demonstration to students of the consequences of their actions. The study shows that the software encouraged experimentation with different routes to a proof, and constituted a challenge to fixated reasoning.

An Overview of Prolog Debugging Tools

In this paper we present an overview of the advances in debugging standard Prolog programs. The analysis offered is in terms of a classification of tools that provide different degrees of activity in the debugging process. Other possible dimensions of analysis are also outlined.

A visual programming approach for teaching cognitive modelling

This paper describes an investigation into the use of a visual programming language to teach computer-based modelling to undergraduate cognitive psychology students. Four sets of evaluation studies were carried out. The findings of these theoretical and empirical evaluations are related to the design principles that informed the language and the context in which it was examined. The educational benefits of gaining some practical experience of cognitive modelling where highlighted in these studies, as was the importance of introducing the visual language within a sound teaching framework. The comments of the students and tutors regarding the use of the Hank visual programming language to teach cognitive modelling indicate that Hank avoids some of the syntactic problems associated with textual programming languages, it can be used to illustrate the flow of control during a programs execution, and it is intuitive and easy to use.

Computer science students perceptions of learning formal reasoning methods

We outline the rationale, put forward by those concerned with software engineering, for adopting a formal methods approach to programming. An empirical study was undertaken with second and third year computer science undergraduates at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Students were invited to analyse retrospectively the difficulties which they perceived they encountered in learning formal reasoning methods. We present the results of the study and consider the pedagogical implications of students’ perceptions of formal reasoning methods as reflected in those results. We note the problem that can arise caused by the sometimes conflicting expectations of computer science students first encountering a formal reasoning approach to programming and those engaged in teaching the principles involved. We conclude by indicating the steps which we are currently taking in order to address the issue of mismatched expectations and to overcome the difficulties reported by those students interviewed.

The Calculator Project-formal reasoning about programs

This paper describes the Calculator Project, which was a three-year joint research project between the Centre for Information Technology in Education at The Open University, U.K. and the Department of Computer Science, QMW, University of London, U.K.. The project was funded by the U.K. Joint Council Initiative in Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction. The central aim of the project was to test the hypothesis that providing so-called calculators would improve students performance in those parts of the undergraduate first-year that relied on formal reasoning skills.<<ETX>>