To address the challenge of discovering computer science learning resources, the Smart Learning Content (SLC) catalog is designed to simplify access to the growing body of educational content. As part of the Standards, Protocols, and Learning Infrastructure for Computing Education (SPLICE) research community's efforts, the catalog functions as a centralized platform supporting SPLICE's objectives of improving interoperability, enabling comprehensive data collection, and facilitating data analysis in computer science education. The SLC catalog stands out from previous catalogs with an approach that applies an ontology-based content organization and validation services. Additionally, it serves as a platform where educators can contribute, access, and share a wide range of resources—including slideshows, interactive exercises, programming tasks, and Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)-integrated content from various learning tools. While the primary goal of the catalog is to disseminate high-quality learning materials, its extensive and varied content requires robust organization and validation mechanisms to ensure educators can efficiently locate and utilize resources. The catalog is designed to further support diverse content types, including both standalone resources and content bundles. For one of our key contributors, OpenDSA—an e-textbook system—we have adopted latest LTI 1.3 standard. This implementation enables the catalog to disseminate content in both LTI 1.1 and LTI 1.3 standards, ensuring compatibility. One key improvement in LTI 1.3 is its security features, incorporating robust authentication methods to ensure stronger protection of sensitive student information. This updated standard enables learning tools to meet the evolving demands of digital education, providing educators and learners with more secure, flexible, and effective resources. / Master of Science / Finding quality computer science learning materials online can be difficult. The Smart Learning Content catalog helps by collecting resources such as slideshows, exercises, and other learning content in a catalog. This catalog makes it easier for Instructors and students to find what they need quickly. This catalog is organized by set of keywords, so instructors can understand how different topics relate to each other. The catalog also verifies that materials meet high-quality standards. Since instructors rely on a variety of online tools, the catalog supports multiple content types and learning technology standards. In addition, the catalog aims to support multiple Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standards, including both older and newer versions. For one of our key contributors, OpenDSA—an e-textbook system—we have adopted the latest LTI 1.3 standard. This implementation enables the catalog to disseminate content in both LTI 1.1 and LTI 1.3 standards, ensuring compatibility. The LTI 1.3 standard enhances security in OpenDSA, protecting student data and maintaining privacy. By aligning with modern standards, the catalog provides pathway for discovering and sharing computer science learning materials.

The focus of this thesis is on techniques for providing feedback and scaffolding in computer science education to enhance student motivation and engagement in programming language learning. Based on initial research on the use of gamification as a feedback mechanism, research gaps relating to adaptive and self-paced learning strategies are identified. In addition, approaches for the generation of single-choice examination questions and programming tasks were developed to tackle challenges arisen during the thesis. These developments, in turn, created the need to enhance formative quality assurance supported by generative artificial intelligence. The main objective of this thesis is on how to improve student motivation and engagement in programming education through the integration of programming-related tasks, scaffolding techniques and other supportive strategies. The research addresses the impact of digital tools and platforms on the teaching and learning processes and examines their impact on teachers, examiners and students. To achieve these objectives, a combination of research methods was used, including a systematic literature review, grounded theory and design science approaches, supported by prototyping and experimental evaluations. The main contributions are a literature study that identifies trends and gaps in the use of gamified feedback in computer science education. In addition, the creation of a template- based task generator for producing varied exam questions is presented. Subsequently, the generator approach is applied to programming tasks and a framework is developed for adaptive programming tasks, that takes into account the student knowledge about task solution and problem context. This is followed by an experimental study to test the usefulness of created hints based on the framework, as well as the role of computational thinking and motivational factors in programming success. Finally, an approach is presented that examines the ability of generative artificial intelligence to be used for formative quality assurance for exam question.:Contents II List of Figures III Acronyms IV 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation and Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Research Objectives and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.3 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.4 Research Area Overview and Interdisciplinary Context . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.4.1 Computer Science Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.4.2 Computational Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1.4.3 Task Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.4.4 Individualized Programming Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.4.5 Gamification, Gameful Learning and Gameful Feedback . . . . . . 14 1.4.6 AI in Educational Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 1.5 Contextualization and Connection between Individual Research Papers . . . 18 1.6 Outline of the Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2 Literature Study 22 2.1 A Systematic Literature Review of Gameful Feedback in Computer Science Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3 Single-Choice Generator 30 3.1 Template-Based Generator for Single-Choice Questions . . . . . . . . . . . 30 4 Feature-based task design 49 4.1 A Didactic Framework for Generating Individual Programming Tasks . . . 49 5 Experiment 61 5.1 Hint Levels for the Solution Space: Exploring the Connection between Com- putational Thinking and Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 6 Formative QA with AI 91 6.1 Assisting Quality Assurance of Examination Tasks: Using a GPT Model and Bayesian Testing for Formative Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7 Conclusion and Outlook 127 7.1 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 7.2 Recommendations for Teaching and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 7.3 Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Bibliography V Wissenschaftlicher Werdegang XXXI Selbstständigkeitserklärung XXXII

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.

In this thesis, I discuss how the undergraduate computer scientist is trained, and how they learn what I am calling computational intuition. Computational intuition describes the methodology in which computer scientists approach their problems and solve them through the use of computers. Computational intuition is a series of skills and a way of thinking or approaching problems that students learn throughout their education. The main way that computational intuition is taught to students is through the experience they gain as they work on homework and classwork problems. To develop computational intuition, students learn explicit knowledge and techniques as well as knowledge that is tacit and harder to teach within the lectures of a classroom environment. Computational intuition includes concepts that professors and students discuss which include “computer science intuition,” “computational thinking,” general problem solving skills or heuristics, and trained judgement. This way of learning is often social, and I draw on the pedagogy of cognitive apprenticeship to understand the interactions between the professors, tutors, and other students help learners gain an understanding of the “computer science intuition.” It is this method of thinking that computer scientists at the Claremont Colleges have stated as being one of the most essential items that should be taught and gained throughout their education and signals a wider understanding of computer science as a field.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis addresses the need to create a flexible laboratory environment for teaching network security. For educators to fully realize the benefit of such a facility, proto-type exercise scenarios are also needed. The paper is based on a model laboratory created at the Naval Postgraduate School. The initial configuration of the NPS lab is described. The work then develops a list of learning objectives achievable in the RCEL. Six proto-type cyber-exercise scenarios are presented to supplement the RCEL description. The activities within each potential scenario are described. The learning objectives met during each scenario are shown. This work demonstrates how a variety of potential RCEL exercises can supplement traditional information assurance education delivery techniques. / Civilian, Federal Cyber Services Corps, Naval Postgraduate School

Title: Computer Science Education at Grammar Schools Author: Daniel Lessner Department: Department of Software and Computer Science Education Supervisor: RNDr. Tomáš Holan, Ph.D., Department of Software and Computer Science Education Abstract: Computer science is not a required component of general education in Czechia. The lack of published local experience impedes the search for general agreement in basic questions, such as: Is computer science in general education possible? Is it beneficial? What educational goals should it have, what topics should it cover? The goal of this thesis is to offer empirically verified answers to these questions, considering grammar school level (students 15-18 years old) in Czechia. A set of fundamental ideas of computer science has been identified and used to develop an introductory course. The course was repeatedly tested, evaluated and improved, following the design-based research methodology. The level of students' achieve- ments as well as their own view of the novel approach to teach "informatics" was tracked. Contrary to the widely held belief (in Czechia), it turned out that computer science in general secondary education is possible and beneficial for the students, as long as the level of difficulty and specific goals are chosen appro- priately. The course is...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the status of computer science teacher certification in the United States. Methods used included a survey of chief teacher certification officers in all fifty states to determine the status of each state concerning the certification of high school computer science teachers and a survey of forty selected leaders in the field of computer science education to determine the current and future status of computer science education and to identify the courses most appropriate for computer science teacher training programs. Status reports on all fifty states were presented. Summaries for the states that offer certification in computer science as a field by itself and as a part of another subject field were provided. Five state-approved computer science certification programs were reviewed.

A seemingly unexplored territory in teaching computer programming is transcription labs. With transcription referring to "transcribe" in the sense of "to make an exact copy of". In transcription labs students are given the complete code and are asked to transcribe it into their own window before they are able to run it. This approach may be interesting as it forces students to engage with the material more than if they had been given a runnable program outright, while still providing a limited, and in some sense safe, learning environment. This project focuses on creating a web application for transcription labs to serve as a jump-off point into exploration of such labs.  Additionally, this thesis contains a preliminary study that aims at gauging if further exploration of transcription labs is worthwhile. The result of the preliminary study indicates that the answer to that question is yes, it is worthwhile exploring transcription labs further.

This master's thesis explores the effectiveness of an educational intervention using an interactive notebook to support and supplement instruction in a foundational-level programming course. A quantitative, quasi-experimental group comparison method was employed, where students were placed into either a control or a treatment group. Data was collected from assignment and final grades, as well as self-reported time spent using the notebook. Independent t-tests and correlation were used for data analysis. Results were inconclusive but did indicate that the intervention had a possible effect. Further studies may explore better efficacy, implementation, and satisfaction of interactive notebooks across a larger population and multiple class topics.

Den för datalogin grundläggande datastrukturen hashtabell är krävande att tillägna sig. En undersökning gjordes på en kurs i algoritmer och datastrukturer med 200 deltagare. Lärandemålet ”implementera hashtabell och hashfunktion” bröts ner i grundläggande färdigheter som testades i en automaträttad programmeringsuppgift med riktad återkoppling till studenterna. 86 studenter gjorde 334 försök att lösa uppgiften. Undersökningen visade att testerna som ingår i den automaträttade uppgiften svarar mot de fel studenterna gör. Studenternas fel kategoriserades efter de grundläggande färdigheter som tagit fram. Kategoriseringen kan användas för att identifiera svaga områden hos studenterna och modifiera undervisningen därefter. Försöken visar också att när uppgiften kräver samtidig tillämpning av två begrepp leder detta ofta till fel i implementationen av algoritmen eller ineffektiva lösningar. / The hash table data structure, which is fundamental to computer science, is demanding to learn. A survey was conducted in a course on algorithms and data structures with 200 participants. The learning outcome of implementing a hash table was broken down into basic skills that were tested in an automated programming task with targeted feedback to the students. 86 students made 334 attempts to solve the task. The study showed that the tests included in the automated task correspond to the errors made by the students. The students' errors were categorized according to the basic skills developed. The categorisation can be used to identify weak areas in the students and modify the teaching accordingly. The experiments also show that when the task requires the simultaneous application of two concepts, this often leads to errors in the implementation of the algorithm or inefficient solutions.