The goal of this study was to determine if performance -based tests should be routinely administered to students in computer application courses. The purpose was to determine the most appropriate mode of testing for individuals taking a computer applications course. The study is divided into areas of assessment, personality traits, and computer attitudes.

In recent years there has been considerable adoption of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard among both Learning Management Systems (LMS), and learning applications. The LTI standard defines a way to securely connect learning applications and tools with platforms like LMS, enabling content from external learning tools to appear as if it were a native part of the LMS, and enabling these learning tools to send users' scores directly to the gradebook in the LMS. An example of such a learning tool is the OpenDSA eTextbook system which provides materials that cover a variety of Computer Science-related topics, incorporating hundreds of interactive visualizations and auto-graded exercises. Previous work turned OpenDSA into an LTI tool provider, allowing for OpenDSA eTextbooks to be integrated with the Canvas LMS. In this thesis, we further explore the problem of connecting educational systems while documenting challenges, issues, and design rationales. We expand upon the existing OpenDSA LTI infrastructure by turning OpenDSA into an LTI tool consumer, thus enabling OpenDSA to better integrate content from other LTI tool providers. We also describe how we expanded OpenDSA's LTI tool provider functionality to increase the level of granularity at which OpenDSA content can be served, and how we implemented support for several LMS, including challenges faced and remaining issues. Finally, we discuss the problem of sharing analytics data among educational systems, and outline an architecture that could be used for this purpose. / Master of Science / In recent years there has been considerable adoption of the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard among Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Blackboard and Canvas, and among learning tools. The LTI standard allows for learning tools to be securely connected with platforms like LMS, enabling content from external learning tools to appear as if it were built into the LMS, and enabling these learning tools to send users’ scores directly to the gradebook in the LMS. An example of such a learning tool is the OpenDSA online textbook system which provides materials that cover a variety of Computer Science-related topics, incorporating hundreds of interactive visualizations and auto-graded exercises. Previous work enabled OpenDSA textbooks to be connected with the Canvas LMS using LTI. In this thesis, we further explore the problem of connecting educational systems while documenting challenges, issues, and design rationales. We expand the existing OpenDSA system to allow OpenDSA to better integrate content from other learning tools. We also describe how we expanded OpenDSA’s features to increase number of ways that OpenDSA content can be consumed, and how we implemented support for adding OpenDSA content to several LMS, including challenges faced and remaining issues. Finally, we discuss the problem of sharing analytics data among educational systems, and outline a potential way to connect educational systems for this purpose.

Improvements in both software and curricula have helped introductory computer science courses attract and retain more students. Pythy is one such online learning environment that aims to reduce software setup related barriers to learning Python while providing facilities like course management and grading to instructors. To further enable its goals of being beginner-centric, we want to integrate full support for media-computation-style programming activities. The media computation curriculum teaches fundamental computer science concepts through the activities of manipulating images, sounds and videos, and has been shown to be successful in retaining students and helping them gain transferable knowledge. In this work we tackle the first two installments of the problem namely, supporting image and sound-based media computation programs in Pythy. This involves not only client-side support that enables students to run media-computation exercises in the browser, but also server-side support to leverage Pythy's auto-grading facilities. We evaluated our implementation by systematically going through all 82 programs in the textbook that deal with image and sound manipulation and verifying if they worked in Pythy as-is, while complementing this with unit-tests for full test coverage. As a result, Pythy now supports 65 out of the 66 media-computation methods required for image and sound manipulation on both the client and the server-side, and 81 out of the 82 programs in the media-computation textbook can be executed as-is in Pythy. / Master of Science

Novice programmers often find learning programming difficult. They suffer from various misconceptions and difficulties in understanding the subject. The overall experience with programming can be negative for many students. They may feel isolated in the programming environment and think that programming is difficult for them. Many schools use automated grading tools to process student work and provide them with early feedback. Web-CAT, an open-source software system that is widely used by many universities, is an example of such an automated grading tool. We have developed a Virtual Teaching Assistant for Web-CAT, called Maria, who can support the students to help alleviate some of the negative emotions towards programming. We have used an animated pedagogical agent as the virtual assistant as certain characteristics of the agent can help with the students' perception about the virtual teaching assistant. Often, students have a fixed mindset about programming. But it is easy to master programming with practice. To promote a growth mindset, Maria also provides feedback recognizing the effort of the student in addition to the performance-oriented feedback of the students' programs. Maria can also provide motivating or encouraging comments to continue working on the assignment to get a good score. Maria can also provide information about the various errors displayed in student feedback. / Master of Science / Beginners often find learning computer programming difficult. They may suffer from various misconceptions and difficulties in understanding the subject. Also, there can be a negative experience surrounding programming for many students. They may feel isolated in the programming environment and think that programming is difficult for them. Many schools use automated software tools to grade student programs and provide them with early feedback. Web-CAT, a software system that is widely used by many universities, is an example of such an automated grading tool. We have developed a Virtual Teaching Assistant to reside within Web-CAT, called Maria, who can support the students to help alleviate some of the negative emotions towards programming. We have used an animated human-like character, known as pedagogical agent, for Maria as it is widely use in pedagogy to help students. Often, students think programming is an innate skill and it is difficult to acquire. But it is easy to master programming with practice. To encourage students to continue working, Maria also provides feedback recognizing the effort that the student has put in towards completing the programming assignment or project. In certain cases, Maria can also provide motivating or encouraging comments to the students to help them continue working on the assignment. Maria can also provide explanation about the various programming errors that students encounter during their submission to Web-CAT.

Many colleges face a lack of academic and emotional support for their computer science students. Previous research into this problem produced Maria, a virtual teaching assistant (TA). This initial version of Maria was able to answer student questions, provide error explanations, and praise students for effort on programming assignments. This research continues work on the Maria project with three design goals: (1) reducing obstacles to use of Maria, (2) allowing Maria to provide better academic support, and (3) allowing Maria to provide better emotional support (with less focus on this goal). Improvements were made to the initial version of Maria, including increasing the number of questions that Maria could answer, allowing Maria to suggest questions for students to ask, and adding longer back-and-forth dialogs between Maria and students. Following this, Maria was deployed to students for an evaluation. The evaluation revealed that certain features were popular (including the longer dialogs and easier access to error explanation) and that Maria was unable to provide relevant answers to many questions asked by students. Using data from the evaluation, more improvements were made to Maria to address some of her shortcomings and build on her popular features. Answers to more questions were added for questions about testing, general knowledge questions, questions about many other topics. Many of these new answers used the popular back-and-forth dialog feature. Additionally, this research discusses a system that could be used to automate the creation of new answers for Maria or any virtual teaching assistant using crowdsourcing. / Master of Science / Many colleges face a lack of academic and emotional support for their computer science students. Previous research into this problem produced Maria, a virtual teaching assistant (TA). This initial version of Maria was able to answer student questions, provide error explanations, and praise students for effort on programming assignments. This research continues work on the Maria project with three design goals: (1) reducing obstacles to use of Maria, (2) allowing Maria to provide better academic support, and (3) allowing Maria to provide better emotional support (with less focus on this goal). Improvements were made to the initial version of Maria, including increasing the number of questions that Maria could answer, allowing Maria to suggest questions for students to ask, and adding longer back-and-forth dialogs between Maria and students. Following this, Maria was deployed to students for an evaluation. The evaluation revealed that certain features were popular (including the longer dialogs and easier access to error explanation) and that Maria was unable to provide relevant answers to many questions asked by students. Using data from the evaluation, more improvements were made to Maria to address some of her shortcomings and build on her popular features. Answers to more questions were added for questions about testing, general knowledge questions, questions about many other topics. Many of these new answers used the popular back-and-forth dialog feature. Additionally, this research discusses a system that could be used to automate the creation of new answers for Maria or any virtual teaching assistant using crowdsourcing.

As the focus on computer science in K-12 classrooms grows, the 'Hour of Code' program has also grown. As Hour of Code is one of the largest educational campaigns, it is worth evaluation to ensure effects are well understood so that implementation can be made most effective. This research sought to better understand the impact of Hour of Code. This thesis presents findings from a systematic review and from a quasi-experimental study. A large number of research articles have been published on Hour of Code. Systematic review identified 64 papers including reports from experiments testing the efficacy of Hour of Code, analysis of learner behavior, reports of participation and suggestions for facilitating. Analysis of these articles provided detail into the known impact of Hour of Code and available resources. However, many questions remain and are outlined in the review. One such remaining question includes questions about the impact specifically on K-12 students. The quasi-experimental study reports findings from computer science education research with over 1000 7th-grade students who engaged in HOC activities. Students' interest and perceptions of CS were collected before and after completing HOC activities. Statistical analysis provided mixed results with some positive and some negative shifts but overall limited effect size.

The problem of this study concerns the performance of students in computer programming following exposure to a computer-aided instruction (CAI) drill in sequencing and practice exercises. The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not student success rates improve in computer programming after completing CAI sequencing drills and practice exercises.

The currently mainstream mobile application development became part of several programming classes, and courses are being developed focused on mobile app development. There are fundamental differences in programming topics for mobile, including the small screen and finger-based interactions, connectivity using different communication channels, and a large number of sensors. Because of these differences, there is a need to explore different approaches to teach the concepts of mobile development. Integrated approaches and collaborative learning are key to handle the multi-platform environment of mobile development and the diversity of its devices. One practice that has been used in educational contexts for collaborative learning is Pair Programming (PP); an approach that features two developers working on the same development task. Since it became popular in the 1990s, Pair Programming (PP) has been used by developers who worked on desktop and web applications. During the past two decades, PP has been studied in both industrial and classroom settings. Several studies have shown that PP is a pedagogical tool that can help students enhance their productivity and performance. However, PP has not been studied for mobile development courses before. With the challenging nature of mobile development topics, we saw potential benefits for pair-based learning. To cover the challenges of mobile development, we developed an approach that integrates Lectures, hands-on Tutorials, and in-class Pair Programming (PP) sessions (the LTP approach). Although PP has been studied previously in classroom settings, LTP provides an adapted version that better fits the requirements of mobile application development. Integrating PP as a core element of mobile development classes aims at giving opportunities to students to collaborate, share experiences, and solve problems together. Moreover, providing multiple teaching approaches ensures that students would benefit from the variety of education methods. The LTP approach aims at helping Computer Science (CS) educators to develop curricula and manage classes for teaching mobile app development. / Ph. D. / Developing software applications (apps) for mobile devices is different than for traditional desktop and web applications. Mobile devices have small screens, short battery life, limited memory and processing power, and users interact directly with the touchscreens using their fingers with no mouse nor keyboard attached. Therefore, software developers need to be aware of such considerations, as well as communication and connectivity issues that are unique to mobile devices. Since mobile app development is becoming mainstream, many Computer Science (CS) programs are developing courses that are dedicated to teaching mobile software development. Since these courses are pretty new, educators are still exploring ways to help navigate the challenges of developing apps for mobile devices. By investigating several teaching methods, we found out that collaborative learning might be suitable and beneficial in this sort of classes. One specific practice that we wanted to explore was Pair Programming. Pair Programming (PP) is a development practice where two developers work collaboratively on the same machine to build software apps. It has been used in industry as well as in classrooms, and it has several benefits in enhancing students’ productivity and performance. Therefore, our work studies how PP can help students in emerging mobile software development classes. This research provides a teaching approach that integrates Lectures, hands-on Tutorials, and in-class PP sessions (the LTP approach), which aims at helping CS educators to develop curricula and manage classes for teaching mobile app development. Integrating PP as a core element of mobile development classes aims at giving opportunities to students to collaborate, share experiences, and solve problems together. However, the LTP approach provides an adapted version of PP that better fits the requirements of mobile application development. Moreover, providing multiple teaching approaches ensures that students would benefit from the variety of education methods.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study compares instructor self-perceptions with student perceptions of teaching quality using the same 16-item evaluation instrument. Three hypotheses were investigated: (1) Instructors' self-evaluations will be higher than those of their respective students; (2) The more similar student-instructor perceptions, the more likely instructors will receive a higher score compared to when student-instructor perceptions are more divergent; and (3) Students taking a course as a major requirement will be more critical of the instructor than those students taking the course as distribution requirement or an elective. A total of 1,524 individuals (1,452 graduate students and 72 instructors) in a part-time evening computer science program participated in the study of 79 courses over the spring and fall semesters of 1996. Overall, instructors generally perceived themselves more positively than their students, although statistically significant differences were observed for only three relevant items (involving grading fairness, presentation clarity and instructor enthusiasm) of the 16 items evaluated. Instructors whose perceptions were more similar to their students were generally rated higher than those instructors whose perceptions were more divergent from their students; however, the difference was not significant. Finally, contrary to the third hypothesis, the reason for taking a course did not have a significant effect on student ratings of the instructor. / 2999-01-02

Including small or large project courses is widely recognized as important in preparing computer science students for a professional career. Typical examples are the capstone courses, which often are seen as the jewel in the crown since this is where students will bring their previous knowledge and skills together to show mastery of their craft. These courses are, however, quite complex with often contradictory ideas about how to actually run them in order to reach the learning objectives. This thesis deals with the contrast between students’ experiences and teachers’ expectations of such courses. The research presented in this thesis contributes to the field of knowledge of computer science project courses by investigating processes that are of importance in relation to the desired practices that the students’ should experience. A method is developed, based on the theory of communities of practice and an identification of key features in project work, for evaluating project courses in terms of setting up a learning environment suitable for its learning objectives. The method is focused on capturing the students’ experiences, which then are mapped onto desirable outcomes, as seen from the teachers’ point of view and expressed in terms of communities of practice theory. The result of the analysis is stories capturing the strengths and deficiencies that can be observed in computer science project courses. Key findings are that rewarding learning environments are not automatically created by following the project model; unclear goals and priorities, for example the choice between focusing on the result of the project or the learning process, can confound, or hinder, the learning outcome. Students may experience a difficult choice between using the project course as a way to become more specialized in a particular area or to develop skills that broaden their knowledge. The method developed throughout the thesis is a result in itself, allowing academics and institutions to reason systematically about the aims and learning outcomes of project coursework. The strength of the method lies in the insight gained from combining the concept of communities of practice with a series of studies that identify key features of project courses, in order to reveal and explain why students’ experience processes and learning outcomes in particular ways.