A segment of studies on group structure and performance in software engineering (SE) project-based learning (PjBL) have focused on roles, including studies that use Belbin team roles and studies that address problematic roles such as social loafing. The present study focuses on the status, which is basically missing in SE PjBL studies, although relating to roles. The study investigates the aspects that students identified as indicators of rising or declining status in their project groups. The status theory was utilized as the framework that motivated the research and on which the results were reflected. An inductive qualitative content analysis was applied to learning reports in which students reflected on their statuses. The indicators of rising status included technical know-how, commitment, management responsibility, and idea ownership, while also group-level attributes such as a caring atmosphere and joint responsibility. The indicators of a declining status included aspects that appear as counterparts of rising status indicators, while also more refined aspects such as no one willing to be a leader or study background. The results are concluded to provide material for educating students about intra-group relations and promoting self-regulation for fruitful collaboration in groups. The authors believe that the results also initiate further PjBL research in which status theory can be utilized.

For developing students’ group- and teamwork skills needed in the team-oriented work environments of the software industry, the role of project-based learning is considered central. Yet there does not appear to be a proper mapping of the current group work research in the computer science project education literature. Thus, the current state of group work research in the research area is somewhat unknown. This study aims to form an overview of how research has addressed students’ group work in the field of computer science (CS) and software engineering (SE) to identify research gaps as well as suitable topics for more detailed literature reviews. A systematic mapping study was used to investigate how group work in tertiary education has been undertaken in the literature during the past decade. Based on the selected papers, the most investigated group work areas were related to the assessment of groups, group formation, communication, and cooperation. The research appeared to be quite narrowly focused on a few areas. Most of the papers were experience or evaluation research. A case study using interviews or questionnaires to gather data from a single course was the most representative type of study. The papers were mainly published in scientific conferences. The use of theoretical frameworks was limited, with a focus on a few established frameworks. Tuckman’s group development theory was the predominant framework, while other commonly used concepts and theories include social loafing, Kolb’s learning style theory, and the Big Five personality traits model. Out of 7515 papers screened, 225 were deemed eligible and analyzed. We conclude a need for more focused group work research in CS/SE student projects, in which education is inspected from particular perspectives. This would create identifiable lines of research and structure the research area. Relatedly, we suggest that the underused theoretical frameworks can inspire important research: group interventions would benefit from a socially shared regulated learning perspective, explicit use of justice theories would improve theoretical understandings of group behavior, and transactional distance would help analyze how students adopt a software process. Moreover, the research area could be precipitated by novel theoretical perspectives. For practitioners, those implementing a group project course can benefit from a large amount of literature on assessment and group formation, which are issues on which the teacher must take a position. We also include a lessons-learned summary for teachers. Generally, the present results outlining the field in a structured way can facilitate research-based teaching.

In this Research Full Paper, the aim was to explore students' perceptions of their study motivation during COVID-19 pandemic. The goal was to dig into this current topic when it is still fresh. This type of event could be recurring in time and it may also be related to more permanent changes in education. The context of the study was an introductory programming course run in synchronous hybrid mode during COVID-19 pandemic. This was a qualitative study where students were interviewed about study motivation, effects of the pandemic, and differences between studying before and during the pandemic. Data collected was analyzed using data-driven theory-based content analysis. Students found it important to have a sense of belonging to the course, peers, and teacher to stay motivated. Hybrid mode was seen to be problematic in terms of communication, collaboration, and connectedness. Pandemic caused time allocation issues, challenges in collaboration due to safety measures, and a general worry. It seemed imperative for students' self-efficacy to know other students had similar challenges, too. Some students formed micro-communities which proved to be a great form of collaboration, especially during a time when the number of close connections was limited. Educators should put effort into giving feedback, help, and encouragement to students, especially in difficult subjects during challenging times. Somewhat comforting is, that if a student's motivation is strong enough, not even a pandemic can affect that.

Previous research has documented challenges in students’ group work. An identifiable segment of the previous research that relates to improving students’ group work conditions is the study of group formation and self- and peer-assessment. Though studies that primarily focus on how to address the conditions of students’ group work and the existing problems can be found, there are not many related to higher education settings. On this ground, the present article advances a qualitative evaluation of the intervention that promotes student groups’ self-awareness and thereby self-regulation toward fair group work during a software engineering project. An inductive thematic analysis was applied to the students’ written reflections on the intervention. To further understand the results, the concept of “group establishment,” referring to destructiveness that complicates individuals’ truthful living at the group level, was employed to reflect on the resulting themes. Hoggett (1998) provided this articulation by synthesizing previous results in psychoanalytic theory. Students’ experiences with the intervention revealed several value gains, including personally identified benefits as well as open group mood, consolidation of grouping, conceptual learning about group work, and regulation for task allocation. Noted challenges included dishonesty and a personal role conflict, and some students reported minor effects on group performance. Students valued safety in the intervention situation and argued that the intervention was needed from outside the group. A summative review of the students’ experiences suggests that the intervention was useful for all groups. The results are discussed from a pedagogic and the aforementioned psychoanalytic perspective, and remarks are made for software engineering education.

This Research-to-Practice, Work in Progress Paper focuses on how learners experience creation of infographics as a summarizing assignment in an advanced level e-course on software engineering management (SEM). We have previously investigated how learners perceive infographics as a repeated reflection assignment during a requirements engineering e-course. To complement this research project, we studied how learners experience the use of infographics as a method for summarizing a whole software engineering management course in e-education setting. The SEM course participants (N=36) found that infographics as a summarizing assignment required complex learning that was altogether deemed highly valuable. Participants reported on a good focus on learning tasks and learning of new skills. The participants who were in working life already found the infographics creation relevant in the light of their work (cf. authenticity). In sum, the creation of summarizing infographics appeared to yield in-depth learning with references to authenticity. The results encourage more research on the topic in computing and engineering education courses.

This work-in-progress paper in research category reports preliminary findings on how students taking introductory computing courses develop identity from the perspective of study difficulties. The motivation was that students identified lack of meaning and prospects (cf. identity) as a study difficulty in a previous qualitative study. The present study further explores this finding by issuing both an identity development and a self-efficacy scale to a larger first-year student cohort. The aim is to characterize the study cohort by the aspects included in the identity development scale, and thereby increase understandings of students' challenges. Moreover, a correlation analysis between identity development and self-efficacy was performed to explore if, for instance, low self-efficacy related to yet a loose identity choice. We also examined the effect of age. Main observations included that many students showed ruminative exploration of identity, which was negatively associated with self-efficacy. Altogether, a rather high number of negative and neutral responses with respect to the identity choice was observed. An initial look at self-efficacy distributions suggests that students related to challenge positively, while a large number of neutral answers were found with respect to the dimension of Effort. This might be indicative of uncertainty about doing the work. Regarding the effect of age, younger students were observed to worry more about the future compared to older students.

Full paper in Research category: Literature provides creativity definitions that are applicable to educational settings. For example, the definition by Plucker et al. emphasizes the `social context' in which the usefulness and novelty of a creative outcome is evaluated, and notes that this emphasis allows students' coursework to be deemed creative without extraordinary characteristics. Computing educators tend to assume that incoming CS course populations welcome creativity, and utilize application contexts (e.g., games, media, arts, and robots) in which creativity is a central attribute. Previous research also suggests that beginner CS students may initially possess versatile identities regarding what computing will entail. This article seeks to provide further evidence for creativity expectation among students starting a CS1 course, looking at how and to what extent creativity is acknowledged. This agenda was observed to be possible using a large data set (N=1,946, eight-year period) in which students at the very beginning of their computing studies characterized what programming is. Qualitatively different creativity-related categories were identified and frequencies for these categories were counted in a sample of 240 respondents. Further content analysis was applied to the remaining data by using word searches. The categories identified were: freedom to create and express, creativity needed in problem solving, programming as a circumstance for personalized activity, associations with arts, creative innovations, tolerance to open-ended situations, aesthetics and elegance of programming, and programming as a flow-like activity. In the sample of 240, 59% of the data was interpreted to refer to creativity, and among the word-searched portion of the data, nearly one-third was interpreted to indicate it. The illustrations and the numbers of references support educators' assumptions as they consider introducing creativity-related education.

This work-in-progress research article presents an introductory qualitative study on students' perceptions of a flexibly delivered, modular computer science course. Many contemporary approaches to education rely in various ways on flexible delivery of course content. This is often done to capitalize on modern technology and the web, and to put the student `in the center.' However, it is becoming manifest that these approaches may challenge both the students and the equity between them, making it important to understand the effects of flexible delivery in terms of the students. In the voice of our students, flexible delivery was seen as a largely positive approach, reducing stress, promoting true learning, and allowing students to better manage their workloads. We also see the effect of the learning environment (teacher, LMS, materials, activities) on a flexible course. Although this qualitative study cannot foreground the extent of typical self-regulation challenges with flexibility, we argue that the observations made precipitate discussion on flexible delivery in curriculum planning from the students' perspective.

This work-in-progress paper in research category is concerned with students' perceptions of justice in software engineering group projects. Taking a directed content analysis approach, the aim is to analyze the relevance of Adams' theory of Equity for small-group project education. The analysis was applied to the data collected from a third-year project course in which students encounter an open-ended group assignment. The results indicate that the theory can serve as a useful framework that helps teachers to identify justice-related issues in project courses. On the other hand, it was concluded that special carefulness is advisable considering the simplicity of the theory.

This work-in-progress research investigates teacher-student communication via Learning Management Systems (LMS) in highly populated courses. An LMS called TIM (The Interactive Material) includes a specific commenting technology that attempts to make teacher-student dialog effortless. The research goal is to explore students' willingness to use the technology and identify patterns of usage. To these ends, a survey with both Likert and open-ended questions was issued to CS1 and CS2 students. A favorable student evaluation was observed while several critical viewpoints that inform technology development were revealed. We noticed that besides appreciating the possibility of making comments, many students found benefit from peripheral participation without being active in commenting themselves. Informal communication appared to be preferred, and the commenting technology was considered second to best channel in this regard, following face-to-face interaction. The results are discussed in the light of Transactional Distance Theory and related literature to inform basic research.

Computing education research shows substantive interest in novice programming challenges. The present study was rather interested in any phenomena that students would recognize as difficulties during their university studies. The research question was what computing students recognized as their study difficulties after the first year of study. An inductive thematic analysis was applied to the students' personal writing of the difficulties experienced. The main result categories were independence in new environment, academic requirements, lack of prospects, learning to work, and social integration, which were illustrated by multiple lower level themes. The results inform educators of the wide range of aspects that can underlie complicated studying and help in designing intervention methodology.

Our Work in Progress Paper in Innovative Practice Category focuses on how learners' experience use of infographics in advanced level e-course on requirements engineering (RE). Infographics are visual representations of information in such a way that information can be easily understood at a glance. Most of the previous infographics studies have been conducted in the context of inquiry learning. To complement this research, we studied how learners experience use of infographics as a method for reflective assignment and hence if the usage of infographics supported conceptualization about RE. We adopted a qualitative content analysis approach, applying thematic network analysis to the data received from five case learners. This approach proposes graphical networks as an aid for analyzing and synthesizing qualitative data into basic, organizing, and global themes. The thematic network analysis produced two global, seven organizational, and 53 basic themes. The global themes were named “Visual literacy” and “Conceptualization”. In addition, the e-course supervisor evaluated learners' infographics according to assessment criteria. Based on these analyses, learners can, using infographics, concentrate on essential topics, distill information, and develop their skills for visual literacy and conceptualization. The results suggest that infographics can be successfully utilized in reflective courses assignments that are typically produced as linear texts.

This work-in-progress paper in innovative practice category presents and evaluates a multi-functional document-based learning management system, TIM (The Interactive Material). This system is developed with the goal of integrating a rich set of features seamlessly into teachers' every-day pedagogical and disciplinary needs. The aim is that a single system (“Less”) would provide all technological solutions necessary for online teaching and learning (“More”), hence the punchline “Less is More!” We illustrate the system and evaluate it based on feedback from teachers. This preliminary evaluation focuses on how teachers reacted to the multi-functional system and is discussed in the context of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

This work-in-progress paper in the research category investigates students' experiences of learning over two project-based courses, of which the first is taken during bachelor studies and the second is taken during master studies. The research goal was to explore if and how the first project experience was considered beneficial to the latter. A pilot interview was conducted and analyzed for qualitatively different themes. Transformative learning theory (TLT) is introduced as the theoretical framework because of its focus on persistent learning originating in transformations in meaning perspectives. The results are discussed in the context of TLT, and they inform curriculum design and research on project-based learning.

Literature on global employability signifies “enabling” learning environments where students encounter ill-formed and open-ended problems and are required to adapt and be creative. Varying forms of “projects,” co-located and distributed, have populated computing curricula for decades and are generally deemed an answer to this call. We performed a qualitative study to describe how project course students are able to capitalize on the promise of enabling learning environments. This critical perspective was motivated by the circumstance of the present-day education systems being heavily regulated for the precipitated production of human capital. The students involved in our study described education system-imposed and group-imposed narratives of narrowed opportunities, as well as many self-related challenges. However, students welcomed autonomy as an enjoyable condition and linked it with motivation. Whole-group commitment and self-related attributes such as taking care of one’s own learning appeared as important conditions. The results highlight targets for interventions that can counteract constraining study conditions and continue the march of projects as a means to foster complex learning for the benefit of students and professionalism in global software engineering.

Our Work in Progress Paper in Research to Practice Category focuses on use of recorded audio feedback (RAF) in higher education. RAF is one method for providing feedback that is becoming increasingly popular, especially in e-education. According to previous studies, most learners have an overall positive attitude towards RAF. However, many of the studies have been carried out from learners' point of view. To complement RAF research, we study how academics experience use of RAF as a feedback method. We adopted a qualitative content analysis approach, applying thematic network analysis to the data received from four case academics. This approach proposes graphical networks as an aid for analyzing and synthesizing qualitative data into basic, organizing and global themes. The thematic network analysis produced two global, nine organizational and 45 basic themes. The two global themes were named “Dialogue diversification” and “Load reduction”. Based on our analysis, academics can, by using RAF, provide learners more relaxed and dialogic feedback and reduce their own workload both mentally and physically.

This Research to Practice full paper reviews two student-made systematic mapping studies and has two goals. The first goal is to report the students' and the supervisor's experiences with this research method, and thereby contribute to practice and knowledge on student research. A mapping study was experienced to fit a situation where the student initially had no personal research interests. Moreover, the method was argued to be appropriate for technology-related disciplines where student identities readily match with the pedantry required. Such student reflections suggest that rewarding research experiences can arise from an initially open starting point, and by considering student background in relation to the nature of work with a particular research method. Supervisors should hence learn about their students' identities when proposing research methods-method matters. The second goal is to disseminate the results of the two mapping studies. The other study mapped intellectual property as an educational research topic, while the other focused on creative coding, similarly as an educational topic. The main results of these studies are summarized and explanation for how the results demonstrate acknowledged benefits of professional mapping studies is provided.

One of the most significant changes in Higher Education pedagogy that has occurred over the past fifty years is the idea that university students should not just be taught theoretical subject knowledge but should engage with practical aspects of their course so developing the skills and professional competences that will allow them to gain successful employment after graduation. In this paper, we relate this development to the Aristotelian notion of intellectual virtue and specifically the concept of phronesis. We discuss the way in which this idea has developed from classical beginnings to the modern educational setting, and argue that the notion of phronesis, that is, practical wisdom or prudential judgement, is crucial to a range of activities which are fundamental to science, engineering and computing education. These include an understanding of what it means to engage in authentic learning and the solution of open-ended or ill-structured problems. We also discuss the role the concept plays in describing key features of work-based learning. Finally, we make some comments concerning the relative value the education system places on different types of knowledge, and why an appropriate understanding of phronesis allows for a proper appreciation of contingent knowledge within the curriculum.

Education can be seen as a preparation for a future profession, where some educational programs very clearly prepare their students for a certain profession, e.g. plumber, nurse and architect. The possible professions for students following education programs in computing is quite varied and thus difficult to cater for, but to educate towards a professional life is still a stated goal in most higher education settings. We argue that this goal is typically not even closely reached and provide an analysis indicating factors explaining this situation. The analysis is based on the concept of professional identity.In earlier work [1] a framework with which to reason about student interactions with the regulatory structure of higher education and teachers was developed. In that paper we developed a compound model which not only relates these players to one another, but also provides approaches to reasoning about misalignments which arise when students and teachers approach their shared learning context from different perspectives. This framework is in this paper applied to address different aspects of professional identity with the intent of bringing forth deeper insights into challenges with educating towards professions. This issue is highly complex and the framework provides a structure that is beneficial for analysing different aspects in a more holistic manner.

Repeatedly documented positive student responses to project-based learning during its decades-long tradition in CS attest to the effectiveness of learning by doing. Support for reflective learning nevertheless continues to be a topic worth studying because the intensity of project work together with a high technical orientation among CS students often complicate reflective practice. A critical incident-inspired assignment was added to a project-based course to support reflective practice in spring 2017. In a previous study, the authors analyzed how students approached the assignment and whether they found it supportive for learning. The present study content-analyses the situations that triggered experiences of learning, as indicated by student-written incident reports during the projects. The results show that students' experience of needing to do something for the project, hands-on experience, problems they encounter during the work, interaction, and receiving new information are all triggers for learning during the project. Students' internal processing and external demands were also identified as triggers, but do not seem to be effective as often as the other triggers in this data. The results provide a detailed view on the students' learning ``triggers,'' and hence complement the general, favorable assumption of learning by doing.

Providing feedback to learners on their writing assignments is one of the most important and time-consuming tasks that a supervisor performs. In e-Education environments, especially in the case of distance learning, giving feedback becomes more challenging because there are often no opportunities for face-to-face interaction. Typically, a supervisor provides comments to learners in written form via email; however, the use of recorded audio feedback (RAF) in e-Education environments has become a viable alternative. This work in progress reports on learners' perceptions of RAF in a multi-cultural higher e-Education context. Our observations indicate that learners tend to have positive feelings toward RAF and that RAF potentially moderates cultural effects. The observations are discussed in light of the relevant literature, and future research questions are proposed.

One of the most important areas of competence for professional engineers is the ability to function well in project work, in particular they need to be able to efficiently solve open-ended problems in different collaborative settings. The development of this ability is however not prominent in engineering education despite numerous authors suggesting open-ended problems as a pedagogical tool to promote development of collaborative problem solving competence by including elements of group or project work in courses. In our own long experience of using open-ended problems in collaborative student projects, we have identified a lack of systematic progression in learning outcomes and skill development. We see this as a major obstacle for fully exploiting the potentials of using open-ended problems as an educational tool. We present a framework that provides a structured view of challenges related to openness that students can encounter in educational projects and that has an impact on the overall complexity of the project. We argue that there are different categories of openness to consider when designing educational settings based on open-ended projects. The categories addressed in this paper are: Character of the problems addressed. Character of the teams. Time constraints. Faculty involvement. External factors. Aspects of openness in the different categories are presented and related to professional engineering competencies. Furthermore, it is discussed how variations in project complexity can be accomplished by variations within the aspects and combinations of aspects. In particular, the framework addresses development and progression of professional competencies.

The attempt to embed Authenticity within the learning process in higher education has been a driving principle within many pedagogical approaches to Higher Education developed over the past three decades. The desire to allow students to learn in a manner that closely resembles the way in which expertise is developed outside the academic environment is a central element of problem-based, inquiry-based and project-based learning. Exploring the implications of authenticity for student achievement and the ways in which this should be assessed has led to innovative teaching methods and ways of evaluating student performance. Unfortunately, authenticity, and authentic assessment in particular, are concepts which are open to a range of interpretations, not least in an educational context where they may be used by both teachers and students with a variety of meanings. This paper investigates the working definitions of authentic assessment used by teaching staff within a Computing department in one U.K. university. We begin by giving an overview of some relevant aspects of authentic learning, which, historically, draws on pedagogies such as situated learning and social learning theory. We then focus on authenticity in the assessment process and describe a number of models which have been used to identify elements that contribute to this range of meaning. We analyse the descriptions of authentic assessment given by academic staff in terms of these concepts and suggest a framework which can be used to integrate the responses and characterise staff understanding of the authenticity. We then briefly compare these findings with other work investigating student responses to the same question and draw conclusions concerning the relevance of these factors on curriculum development, the use of assessment to drive learning and the role of staff development in promoting positive change in these areas. Finally, we make suggestions for further work.

The problem of how best to assess student learning is a fundamental one in education. Changes to computer science curricula seek to emphasise teaching practices that promote deep learning through direct, contextual examination of student performance on tasks that resemble those of practitioners, rather than more traditional methods. This kind of "authentic assessment" is becoming more popular as it appears to incorporate employability skills associated with professional practice into the curriculum in a natural way.

This article reports on an action research project on improving a functional programming course by moving toward a practical and flexible study environment—flipped and blended classroom. Teaching the topic of functional programming was found to be troublesome using a traditional lectured course format. The need to increase students’ amount of practice emerged while subsequent challenges relating to students’ independent practical coursework were observed. Particular concerns relating to group work, learning materials, and the attribute of flexibility were investigated during the third action research cycle. The research cycle was analyzed using a qualitative survey on students’ views, teacher narrative, and students’ study activity data. By this third research cycle, we found that (i) the “call for explanation” is an apt conceptualization for supporting independent work, and in particular for the design of learning materials; (ii) use of student-selected groups that can be flexibly resized or even disbanded enables spontaneous peer support and can avoid frustration about group work; and (iii) students greatly appreciate the high degree of flexibility in the course arrangements but find that it causes them to slip from their goals. The project has improved our understanding of a successful implementation of the target course based on group work and learning materials in the context of independent study, while the attribute of flexibility revealed a contradiction that indicates the need for further action.

Phenomenographic studies in computing education research have previously focused on learning "programming thinking" [3], the act of learning to program [2], and conceptions of learning generally in an engineering context [10]. In the present study we analyze and discuss "what it takes to do computer programming" using phenomenography as research approach. This study is based on a large survey dataset gathered in summer outreach courses for K-12 students. The analysis resulted in 12 qualitatively different categories belonging to five separate, emergent themes: Syntax and language features, nature of programming work generally, computational thinking and problem solving, prerequisites, and auxiliary skills. We additionally reviewed whether the students' previous experience explains the categories, and observed that a mechanistic view of programming was prevailing among the inexperienced users, while experienced students more often stressed algorithmic thinking and logical reasoning.

Abstract Teaching functional programming as a second programming paradigm is often difficult as students can have strong preconceptions about programming. When most of these preconceived ideas fail to be confirmed, functional programming may be seen as an unnecessarily difficult topic. A typical topic that causes such difficulties is the language of types employed by many modern functional languages. In this paper, we focus on addressing this difficulty through the use of step-by-step calculations of type expressions. The outcome of the study is an elaboration of a worked example format and a methodical approach for teaching types to beginner functional programmers.

Abstract This article presents an overview of student difficulties in an introductory functional programming (FP) course taught in Haskell. The motivation for this study stems from our belief that many student difficulties can be alleviated by understanding the underlying causes of errors and by modifying the educational approach and, possibly, the teaching language accordingly. We analyze students' exercise submissions and categorize student errors according to compiler error messages and then manually according to the observed underlying cause. Our study complements earlier studies on the topic by applying computer and manual analysis while focusing on providing descriptive statistics of difficulties specific to FP languages. We conclude that the majority of student errors, regardless of cause, are reported by three different compiler error messages that are not well understood by students. In addition, syntactic features, such as precedence, the syntax of function application, and deeply nested statements, cause difficulties throughout the course.

This article considers student learning about group work in the context of project courses where student groups work under realistic expectations. Based on the literature, justice is explicated as a group work concept and regarded as a professional skill that can be practiced. Preliminary student feedback on teaching through continuous discussions on justice are presented together with teacher experiences.

Scholars and instructors have been carrying out a multitude of actions to increase students' interest in computer science during the past years. Still, there is a need for knowledge on how these attempts develop student interest. In this qualitative study, we construct illustrative categories out of students who have attended our K-12 coding club and game programming summer course activities. We found four categories: Inactivity, Lack of self-direction, Experimenting, and Professionalism. We also briefly project this abstraction onto a four-phase model of interest development.

This paper presents lessons learned from five years of teaching a five-day game design and programming outreach course. The course was offered in summer time and targeted at middle and high school students. In total, 462 youngsters have taken part in 21 course instances. We describe our course concept, and discuss our successes and challenges. In particular, we focus on understanding our student populations by presenting descriptives and statistics of the events, and performing a statistical cluster analysis based on pre- and post-surveys. The cluster analysis was complemented with an analysis of the qualitative data, also originating from the surveys. Taken together, students could be classified into five groups with substantial differences: Enthusiasts, Newbies, Uncertains, Experimenters, and Unsatisfieds. Awareness of the clusters helps instructors of similar courses in developing course content, designing differentiated instruction, and planning follow-up or advanced courses.

In this paper, we examine a master's level course that emphasizes self-direction on the part of students. The course is run by weekly group assignments and requires independent work such that only one mandatory classroom session is arranged each week. Our specific research interests are how students responded to the setting of this kind and whether they demonstrated self-direction during the course. We surveyed the students' view of the course, their group work experience, and their study habits, and analyzed the resultant survey data for themes. The results suggest that while the pass rate was considerably high and the course was regarded as well-organized by the students, there were several concerns related to whether we could prompt self-directed study habits.

This paper presents a qualitative study of a school-university collaborative project where a game-themed CS1 course was offered as-is to high school students. Our specific interest was to explore the students' experiences with the university level course. Our analyses indicate that immediate and regular support was highly important for student performance, as support of this kind could mitigate issues related to students' orientation towards the high workload of the course. Students who showed academic interest were likely to pass, whereas students lacking self-direction or work efficiency were likely to drop out. Both passed and drop-outs found the course to be a good learning experience. The game theme of the course was in most cases found highly motivating and fun, while it was not a necessity for the majority of the students. This information can be utilized by higher education instructors who plan to carry out university courses in cooperation with high schools.

Lecturing is known to be a controversial form of teaching. With massed classrooms, in particular, it tends to constrain the active participation of students. One of the remedies applied to programming education is to use technology that can vitalize interaction in the classroom, while another is to base teaching increasingly on programming activities. In this article, we present the first results of an exploratory study, in which we teach programming without lectures, exams, or grades, by heavily emphasizing programming activity, and, in a pedagogical sense, student self-direction. This article investigates how students reacted to the active role required of them and what issues emerged in this setting where self-direction was required. The results indicate three issues that should be taken into account when designing a student-driven course: the challenge of supporting students' theoretical synthesis of the topics to be learned, the individual's opportunities for self-direction in a group work setting, and mismatch between individual learning processes and academic course scheduling.

In our faculty we have run week-long K-12 game programming courses now for three summers. In this paper we investigate what programming-related activities students do after they take a course, and what factors in the students' background relate to post-course programming. We also investigate a possible change in the students' interest towards higher education science studies. We find that most students continue programming after the course and that their interest towards science studies keeps increasing. In student background we observed some indicative trends, but did not find reliable explaining factors related to post-course programming or increased interest towards science studies.

Several programming environments have been constructed to facilitate novice programming at K-12 and CS0/CS1 levels. The environments can be roughly divided into those using visual or textual programming. This paper presents a K-12 game programming course concept based on textual programming. The concept is based on an easy-to-use C# library, called Jypeli, built on top of Microsoft XNA Framework. The library tries to maintain advantages of visual programming and avoid challenges of textual programming. In particular, the library helps beginners to program their first games in a short period of time and without a heavy syntactic load. The course concept and an initial evaluation consisting of student feedback and a literature rationale are presented.

Research has noticed that imparting TDD-like testing to an early computing curriculum is challenging because it increases technical and cognitive load for the students. This paper addresses the challenge with a software-based solution constructed to facilitate the process of writing tests. The solution allows using a compact while efficient syntax for formulating tests, writing tests into JavaDoc comments, thus close to the source code that implements intended functionalities, and automates the generation of actual test code. The constructed solution -- the ComTest tool -- has now been used in four introductory level programming course offerings. The paper presents the tool and concludes with initial lessons learned.

We argue for the importance of a real customer in a capstone project course via reporting experiences from over ten years period at University of Jyväskylä (JYU), and providing also practical knowledge and theoretical underpinnings for such an arrangement. Based on our experience and empirical data, we underline that this arrangement is a chance for the students to increase their occupational identity. Theoretically our rationalization of the course arrangement proposes self-direction, empowerment, motivation, and deep level learning strategies for the students.

Test-Driven Development (TDD) was applied in educational setting right after it became well-known as a key practice of Extreme Programming (XP). Basically, there are many studies reporting positive experiences on TDD applied in different levels of a curriculum. In this paper, we discuss the role of TDD in education through the students' experiences. In our experiment, a challenging programming task was applied in order to see what kind of difficulties the students would encounter and discuss. The students' answers revealed several topics that require a careful treatment in teaching to avoid conceptual confusion. For example, the topics include the scalability of TDD, extent of single test, and discipline.