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. / 2031-01-02

Psycholinguistic research shows that it is unreasonable to expect programmers to easily find minor typos in their otherwise correct code. The Python Error Support Tool PEST was designed and developed to address this. PEST offers an explanation for why the error happened and presents a list of possible fixes that will allow the user’s code to compile. This tool was evaluated by several students with a beginner’s level of expertise in Python, and feedback was generally positive with tangible steps for improvement.

Introductory computer science courses can be notoriously difficult for students, especially those outside of the major. There are many reasons for this, but the programming software itself may play a significant role.  To address this issue, we have developed Pythy, a web-based programming environment that allows students to write, execute, and test programming assignments from within the familiar interface of a web browser.  In this work, we discuss various aspects of Pythy in detail, including the rationale behind its design, the system architecture on which it is built, and the various functions offered by the software.  Next, we discuss an evaluation of Pythy\'s effectiveness during a programming course for non CS-majors offered at Virginia Tech, comparing it to a different software solution used in another programming course.  Results suggest that Pythy was successful in several target areas, including making it easier to get started with programming and providing feedback about program behavior.  Access log data from Pythy itself reveals details about how students used the system.  Finally, we conclude with a summary of key contributions and suggest some potential future directions for the system. / Master of Science

For nearly three decades, researchers have studied the persistent underrepresentation of women in computer science and computing-related fields. Findings indicate that recruitment and retention strategies result in short-term gains in interest and diversity in computer science. One recruitment strategy that shows promise to increase student interest in computer science is after-school programs. To increase the number of students exposed to and interested in computer science and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields, a suburban school district in southeastern Pennsylvania started an after-school program. This fee-based program offers seven-week long robotics, programming, and science experiment courses for elementary and middle school students. This study used a quantitative approach with the expectancy-value model as the theoretical framework to examine whether there are lasting effects from this after-school program on course and career selection. The results show a higher likelihood of study participants, each of whom participated in an after-school program, to select computer science in high school than the general high school population. The results also show that the rate of computer science choice for this group is also significant when accounting for the gender of the participants. Family dynamics may have been the influencing factor. The results are not supportive of the after-school program influencing participants to study computer science at the collegiate level, but there is some support for study participants interest in a computing career. / Educational Psychology

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.

Command line and version control skills are vital to computer science students during their education and as they enter the software industry. These skills are commonly taught to undergraduate students via traditional lecturing methods and brief hands-on activities. Many students struggle with learning the Git version control system because they are not familiar with the command line, or they do not understand how Git works internally. Recent research highlights the effectiveness of using interactive visualizations to teach computer science concepts. Thus, we developed novel command line and Git exercises with interactive visualizations. These exercises integrate with learning management systems to automate grading. We tested the effectiveness of the exercises in a CS2 course at a large research institution by conducting pre-assessments before and post-assessments after the students completed the exercises. We found that students performed significantly better on both the command line and Git post-assessments than on the pre-assessments. Furthermore, we found that students with less experience with the command line and Git achieved a significantly greater improvement from the pre-assessments to the post-assessments. Additionally, we found that students with different levels of command line and Git experience did not perform differently on the exercises. Therefore, the exercises provide a novel tool for teaching command line and Git concepts to undergraduate computer science students with any level of command line and Git experience. / Master of Science / Command line is a term used to refer to a text-based user interface that allows users to interact with their computers by inputting commands. Git is a version control system typically used to track the stages of development for a computer program. Command line and Git skills are vital to computer science students during their education and as they enter the software industry. These skills are commonly taught to undergraduate students via traditional lecturing methods and brief hands-on activities. Many students struggle with Git because they are not familiar with the command line, or they do not understand how Git works internally. Recent research highlights the effectiveness of using interactive visualizations to teach computer science concepts. Thus, we developed novel command line and Git exercises with interactive visualizations. These exercises integrate with learning management systems to automate grading. We tested the effectiveness of the exercises in a CS2 course at a large research institution by conducting pre-assessments before and post-assessments after the students completed the exercises. We found that students performed significantly better on the post-assessments than on the pre-assessments. Furthermore, we found that students with less experience with the command line and Git achieved a significantly greater improvement from the pre-assessments to the post-assessments. Therefore, the exercises provide a novel tool for teaching command line and Git concepts to undergraduate computer science students with any level of command line and Git experience.