The undergraduate Computer Science program at Virginia Tech is the largest in the Commonwealth of Virginia, of which a key component is ``CS 1044: Introduction to Programming'', and is typical of a first course in computer programming throughout the USA. While the student access to learning resources has improved considerably with the development of web-based assets, students are still expected to use the same sophisticated program development tools as are used in industry. The perceived complexity of the learning environment currently in use drives many women and minority students from the Computer Science program. A great deal of attention has been paid to the need to administer the student assignments and the grading system for this course, so as to minimize the teaching/grading load, but little attention has been paid to the methodologies of learning the material through practice. The work reported herein is intended to improve the pedagogy of this course by creating and integrating teaching/learning tools that better manage the student's engagement in the use of program development activities. Following the implementation of a three-element software system involving an interpreter for the C-language, a program development environment, and a data-monitoring/collectiondevice, the system was deployed in support of the freshman course in parallel to the commercial system commonly used. The experiment concentrated on examining the impact of the simplified development environment and the effort required for students to complete assigned programming projects. / Ph. D.

Since a massive decline of computer science graduates in 2002, computer science departments have been unable to reach previous graduation rates. In wake of this dramatic loss of graduates, researchers have been searching for the reasons students are avoiding computer science and choosing other majors. To combat this decrease in computer science graduates, the CloudSpace environment pro- vides additional context to entry level computer science courses. This shift in context re- moves boring assignments from the early computer science curriculum and replaces them with more engaging web centric assignments. The CloudSpace environment presents a model that maintains student's focus on core computer science competencies while providing a highly simplified web development toolkit to develop feature rich AJAX web applications. This the- sis includes the rational and implementation of a cloud based hosting service and a highly abstracted web tool kit that enables students to replicate modern web applications. / Master of Science

Undergraduate courses such as mathematics, science, and computer programming require high levels of decision making, concentration, and cognitive demand. Researchers in the field of instructional design are interested in effective instructional strategies that can aid practitioners in teaching such abstract and complex skills. One example of an instructional strategy that has proven effective in teaching these skills is cognitive apprenticeship (CA). While CA has been applied to courses such as mathematics and computer programming in face-to-face and blended learning environments, there is little evidence of the advantages of applying CA in a fully online computer programming course. Specifically, the introductory programming course, CS1, is the first contact that undergraduate computer science students have with their chosen major. Historically, drop-out rates for CS1 have been high and thus strategies for effective teaching of this course have served as an important topic in the research literature. The goal was to design and validate internally an online CS1 course that incorporates CA strategies. A two-phase design and development research method was used to guide the construction and internal validation of a fully online CS1 course. Phase one resulted in the design and development of the course guide. An expert-review process using the Delphi technique was implemented in phase two to validate the design with regard to its effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal. Three rounds of review by the panel resulted in consensus. Results from the expert-review confirmed the application of CA as an effective, efficient, and appealing instructional strategy to use when designing an online CS1 course. Future research should focus on external validation of the design by implementing the course to evaluate its effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal among stakeholders. In addition, it is hoped that the course guide can be used to help practitioners design and implement a fully online CS1 course that uses CA strategies.

Decreasing enrollments, lower rates of student retention and changes in the learning styles of today's students are all issues that the Computer Science (CS) academic community is currently facing. As a result, CS educators are being challenged to find the right blend of technology and pedagogy for their curriculum in order to help students persist through the major and produce strong graduates. Visual technologies are being explored as a way to present difficult programming concepts in a manner that is easier to visualize and simpler to use. Visual technologies can make learning programming easier by minimizing the syntax of the programming language being used and providing visual feedback to the students to aid in conceptualization of the programming constructs. The goal was to improve student retention and performance by incorporating visual technologies in the introductory programming course, CS1, at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). The ADDIE approach to instructional design was used to develop and implement a curriculum that incorporated visual technologies in CS1 at ETSU. Subsequently, quasi-experimental research methods, using the Post-Test Only Nonequivalent Groups Design approach, were used to perform assessment on the effects of the revised curriculum on student performance in the course and retention in the major as compared to student performance and retention as measured prior to the course redesign. The results of the study indicate a positive impact on student performance in CS1 and student retention in the major as a result of the use of two types of visual technologies in CS1 at ETSU. Visual technologies supporting algorithm development, such as RAPTOR, had a positive impact on student performance in the area of problem solving and algorithm development as well as the use of decision and repetition constructs in programming. Visual technologies supporting program development, such as Alice, had a positive impact on student performance in the area of object-oriented programming concepts such as objects and classes. The combination of these two types of visual technologies showed evidence of improvement among student performance as a whole in the course and slight improvement in student persistence in the major.

Retention in Computer Science undergraduate education, particularly of underrepresented groups, continues to be a growing challenge. A theme shared by much of the research literature into why this is so is one of a distancing in the relationship between Computer Science professors and students [39, 40, 45]. How then, can we begin to lessen that distance, and build stronger connections between these groups in an era of growing class sizes and technology replacing human interaction? This work presents BitFit, an online programming practice and learning tool, to describe an approach to using the telemetry made possible from deploying this or similar tools in introductory programming courses to improve the quality of instruction, and the students' course experiences. BitFit gathers interaction data as students use the tool to actively engage with course material. In this thesis we first explore what kind of quantitative data can be used to help professors gain insights into how students might be faring in their courses, moving the method of instruction towards a data- and student-driven model. Secondly, we demonstrate the capacity of the telemetry to aid professors in more precisely identifying students at risk of failure in their courses. Our goal is to reveal possible reasons these students would be considered at-risk at an early enough point in the course to make interventions possible. Finally, we show how the use of tools such as BitFit within introductory programming courses could positively impact the student experience. Through a preliminary qualitative assessment, we seek to address impact on confidence, metacognition, and the ability for an individual to envision success in Computer Science. When used together within an all-encompassing approach aimed at improving retention in Computer Science, tools such as BitFit can move towards improving the quality of instruction and the students' experience by helping to build stronger connections rooted in empathy between professors and students. / Graduate / 0710 / 0984 / alrusso@uvic.ca

Salicylic acid (SA) is essential to the establishment of both local and systemic acquired resistance (SAR) against a wide range of phytopathogens. Isochorismate synthase 1 (ICS1) is the key enzyme involved in the synthesis of SA and it is transcriptionally activated by the regulatory proteins SAR deficient 1 (SARD1) and Calmodulin binding protein 60g (CBP60g). It has been demonstrated previously that the loss-of-function mutant, S-nitrosogluthione reductase 1-3 (gsnor1-3), increased cellular levels of S-nitrosylation. Significantly, accumulation of both free SA and its storage form SA-glucoside (SAG), were substantially reduced, disabling multiple SA-dependent immune responses. However, the molecular mechanism underlying this observation remains to be established. Our data suggests that the transcription of ICS1 and it regulators, SARD and CBP60g, are reduced in the gsnor1-3 mutant, implying that increased cellular S-nitrosylation blunts the expression of ICS1 by reducing the transcription of its activators. We demonstrated that SARD1 is S-nitrosylated in vitro resulting in inhibition of its DNA binding activity. Further, Cys438 of SARD1 was found to be the site of S-nitrosylation, demonstrated by the observation that the SARD1 C438S mutant was insensitive to NO regulation in regard to DNA binding activity.

In this paper, we describe a recent trend in the introductory computer science curriculum which advocates conceptualizing computation primarily as coordinated concurrent activities [8], [9], [10]. Consistent with this philosophy is the focus on the event-driven model of computation [7]. While one can utilize these approaches with any thread and/or event supporting object-oriented language (e.g. Java) in a desktop programming environment, they become particularly worthwhile when used in conjunction with physical robots. This paper argues the case for the benefits of this approach and provides sample exercises that illustrate the use of this pedagogy using Lego Mindstorms RCX bricks programmed in Java for use in introductory programming.

The primary task of learning to program in introductory computer science courses (CS1) cognitively overloads novices and must be better supported. Several recent studies have attempted to address this problem by understanding the role of metacognitive awareness in novices learning programming. These studies have focused on teaching metacognitive awareness to students by helping them understand the six stages of learning so students can know where they are in the problem-solving process, but these approaches are not scalable. One way to address scalability is to implement features in an automated assessment tool (AAT) that build metacognitive awareness in novice programmers. Currently, AATs that provide feedback messages to students can be said to implement the fifth and sixth learning stages integral to metacognitive awareness: implement solution (compilation) and evaluate implemented solution (test cases). The computer science education (CSed) community is actively engaged in research on the efficacy of compile error messages (CEMs) and how best to enhance them to maximize student learning and it is currently heavily disputed whether or not enhanced compile error messages (ECEMs) in AATs actually improve student learning. The discussion on the effectiveness of ECEMs in AATs remains focused on only one learning stage critical to metacognitive awareness in novices: implement solution. This research carries out an ethnomethodologically-informed study of CS1 students via think-aloud studies and interviews in order to propose a framework for designing an AAT that builds metacognitive awareness by supporting novices through all six stages of learning. The results of this study provide two important contributions. The first is the confirmation that ECEMs that are designed from a human-factors approach are more helpful for students than standard compiler error messages. The second important contribution is that the results from the observations and post-assessment interviews revealed the difficulties novice programmers often face to developing metacognitive awareness when using an AAT. Understanding these barriers revealed concrete ways to help novice programmers through all six stages of the problem-solving process. This was presented above as a framework of features, which when implemented properly, provides a scalable way to implicitly produce metacognitive awareness in novice programmers.

Today, many introductory computer science courses rely heavily on a specific programming language to convey fundamental programming concepts. For beginning students, the cognitive capacity required to operate with the syntactic forms of this language may overwhelm their ability to formulate a solution to a program. We recognize that the introductory computer science courses can be more effective if they convey fundamental concepts without requiring the students to focus on the syntax of a programming language. To achieve this, we propose a new teaching method based on the Design Recipe and Code Outlining (DRaCO) processes. Our new pedagogy capitalizes on the algorithmic intuitions of novice students and provides a tool for students to externalize their intuitions using techniques they are already familiar with, rather than with the syntax of a specific programming language. We validate the effectiveness of our new pedagogy by integrating it into an existing CS1 course at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. We find that the our newly proposed pedagogy shows strong potential to improve students’ ability to program.

Computing education for learning to program has made great strides in the current century. Exciting educational technologies are now available and active learning pedagogies are increasingly used. Interest is strong, but the longstanding problem remains: learning to program as an analytical endeavor is quite frustrating for many. The purpose of this study is to discover ways to mitigate this frustration. It researches ways to help students comprehend code by guiding them to take it apart (through reading, tracing, completing, and debugging) as they learn to write code on their own. This study contributes to the understanding of learning from errors. It also builds upon and further develops the emergent pedagogy of de-constructionism. The de-constructionist approach involves taking things apart, practice, and learning from errors. This study applies a de-constructionist approach in an experiment with ~80 undergraduates learning Python in an introductory programming class. During weekly lab periods, students engaged with web-based interactive practice problems that emphasize reading, tracing, completing, and in some cases, debugging code. Students also wrote code for lab and homework assignments. Approximately half of the students were given some that involved learning from bugs that were intentionally placed in the provided code, while the others were not. Learning gains were assessed using pre/post tests and exams. Surveys were used to measure attitudes. Learning gains and attitudes were compared according to condition (Bugs, NoBugs), prior experience, gender, minority status, and class size. This study demonstrates that bugs can be intentionally incorporated into practice problems that students like to solve, without detrimental effects on learning or attitudes about computing. It also contributes to the literature on code comprehension. / Math & Science Education