The overall goal of this work is to support student success in computer science. First, I introduce BitFit, an ungraded practice programming tool built to provide students with a pressure-free environment to practice and build confidence working through weekly course material. BitFit was used in an introductory programming course (CSC 110) at the University of Victoria for 5 semesters in 2015 and 2016. The contributions of this work are a number of studies done analyzing the log data collected by BitFit over those years. First, I explore whether patterns can be identified in log data to differentiate successful from unsuccessful students, with a specific focus on identifying students at-risk of failure within the first few weeks of the semester. Next, I separate out only those students who struggle early in the semester, and examine their changes in programming behaviour over time. The goal behind the second study is to differentiate between transient and sustained struggling, in an attempt better understand the reasons successful students are able to overcome early struggles. Finally, I combine survey data with log data to explore whether students understand whether their study habits are likely to lead to success. Overall, this work provides insight into the factors contributing to behavioural change in an introductory programming course. I hope this information can aid educators in providing supportive intervention aimed at guiding struggling students towards more productive learning strategies. / Graduate / 0984 / 0525 / 0710 / aestey@uvic.ca

Learning the syntax, semantics, and concepts behind software engineering can be a challenging task for many individuals. This paper examines the Alice 3 software, a three-dimensional visual environment for teaching programming concepts, to determine if it is an effective tool for improving student achievement, raising self-efficacy, and engaging students. This study compares the similarities and differences between a Fundamentals of Programming course with and without Alice integrated into the curriculum. Both the treatment and control Groups are using the same Java materials, assignments, and exams. The treatment group also completes Alice activities for each programming concept throughout the course; as well as two Alice assignments.

As the field of computer science continues to grow, the number of students enrolled in related programs will grow as well. Though one-on-one tutoring is one of the more effective means of teaching, computer science instructors will have less and less time to devote to individual students. To address this growing concern, many tools that automate parts of an instructor’s job have been proposed. These tools can assist instructors in presenting concepts and grading student work, and they can help students learn to program more effectively. A growing group of intelligent tutoring systems attempts to tie all of this functionality into a single tool that is meant to be used throughout an entire CS course or series of courses. To contribute to this emerging area, the Factoring Problem Generator (FPG) is presented in this work. The FPG creates and grades problems in C in which students search for and extract blocks of repeated code into individual functions, learning to utilize parameters and return values as they do so. The problems created by the FPG are highly configurable by instructors such that the difficulty can be finely tuned to suit students’ individual needs. Instructors can choose whether or not to include arrays, pointers, certain elemental data types, certain operators, or certain kinds of statements, among other things. The FPG is additionally capable of generating a set of test cases for each generated problem. These test cases fully exercise students’ solutions by covering all branches of execution, and they ensure that program functionality does not change as students factor code into functions. Initial experimentation with the system has suggested that the FPG can be integrated into a beginning CS curriculum and with further refinement could become a standard tool in the CS classroom.

Due to the rapid proliferation of the World Wide Web (WWW) in recent years, many educators are now seeking to improve the effectiveness of their instruction by providing interactive, web-based course material to their students. The purpose of this thesis is to document a set of eight online learning modules created to improve the effectiveness of learning the fundamentals of Computer Science. The modules are as follows: • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/Algorithms/Lessons/index.html">Algorithms</A> - Definition and specification of algorithms, with a comparison and analysis of several sorting algorithms as examples. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/AI/Lessons/index.html">Artificial Intelligence</A> - Overview of current applications in this discipline. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/DataStructures/Lessons/index.html">Data Structures</A> - Explanation of basic data structures, including an introduction to computer memory and pointers, and a comparison of logical and physical representations of commonly used data structures. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/MachineArchitecture/Lessons/index.html">Machine Architecture</A> - Explanation of data storage, gates and circuits, and the central processing unit. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/NumberSystems/Lessons/index.html">Number Systems</A> - Discussion of number representation and arithmetic in number systems other than the decimal number system, with a focus on binary numbers and binary arithmetic. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/OS/Lessons/index.html">Operating Systems</A> - Explanation of the purpose of operating systems and the major components that make up an operating system. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/ProgrammingLanguages/Lessons/index.html">Programming Languages</A> - Explanation of the fundamental concepts in procedural programming languages. • <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/SE/Lessons/index.html">Software Engineering</A> - Introduction to software life cycle models and an overview of the procedural and object-oriented paradigms. Each module consists of a set of lessons and review questions written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Embedded in these pages are various interactive components implemented as Flash animations or Java applets. The modules currently reside on the Computer Science courseware server of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and can be viewed at the following WWW site: <A HREF="http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/index.html">http://courses.cs.vt.edu/csonline/</A> / Master of Science

<p>The Theory of Applied Mind of Programming (TAMP) provides a new model for describing how programmers think and learn. Historically, many students have struggled when learning to program. Programming as a discipline lives in logic and reason, but theory and science tell us that people do not always think rationally. TAMP builds upon the groundbreaking work of dual process theory and classical educational theorists (Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner) to rethink our assumptions about cognition and learning. Theory guides educators and researchers to improve their practice, not just their work but also their thinking. TAMP provides new theoretical constructs for describing the mental activities of programming, the challenges in learning to program, as well as a guidebook for creating and recognizing the value of theory.</p> <p>This dissertation is highly nontraditional. It does not include a typical empirical study using a familiar research methodology to guide data collection and analysis. Instead, it leverages existing data, as accumulated over a half-century of computing education research and a century of research into cognition and learning. Since an applicable methodology of theory-building did not exist, this work also defines a new methodology for theory building. The methodology of this dissertation borrows notation from philosophy and methods from grounded theory to define a transparent and rigorous approach to creating applied theories. By revisiting past studies through the lens of new theoretical propositions, theorists can conceive, refine, and internally validate new constructs and propositions to revolutionize how we view technical education.</p> <p>The takeaway from this dissertation is a set of new theoretical constructs and promising research and pedagogical approaches. TAMP proposes an applied model of Jerome Bruner's mental representations that describe the knowledge and cognitive processes of an experienced programmer. TAMP highlights implicit learning and the role of intuition in decision making across many aspects of programming. This work includes numerous examples of how to apply TAMP and its supporting theories in re-imagining teaching and research to offer alternative explanations for previously puzzling findings on student learning. TAMP may challenge conventional beliefs about applied reasoning and the extent of traditional pedagogy, but it also offers insights on how to promote creative problem-solving in students. </p><br>