Software artifacts and source code are often viewed as pure technical constructs aiming primarily at delivering specific functionality to the end users. However, almost each line of a computer program is the result of software engineer’s craftsmanship and thus reflects their skills and capabilities, but also their aesthetic view of how code should be written. Additionally, by nature, the code is not an artifact that is managed by a single person: the code is peer-reviewed, in some cases programmed in pairs, or maintained by different people. In this respect, the first impression for the quality of a code is usually a matter of “ reading ” the “ beauty ” of the code and then diving into the details of the actual implementation. This “ first-look ” impression can psychologically bias the software engineers, either positively or negatively and affect their evaluation. In this article we propose a novel code beauty model (accompanied with metrics) and empirically explore: (a) if different software engineers perceive code beauty in the same way; (b) if the proposed code beauty metrics are correlated to the perceived code beauty by individual software engineers; and (c) if code beauty metrics are correlated to software maintainability. The results of the study suggest: (a) that code beauty is highly subjective and different software engineers perceive a code chunk as beautiful or not in an inconsistent way; (b) that some code beauty metrics can be considered as correlated to maintainability; and therefore, the “ first-look ” impression might to some extent be representative of the quality of the reviewed code chunk.

Software artifacts and source code are often viewed as pure technical constructs aiming primarily at delivering specific functionality to the end users. However, almost each line of a computer program is the result of developers' craftsmanship and thus reflects their skills and capabilities, but also their aesthetic view of how code should be written. Additionally, by nature, the code is not an artifact that is managed by a single person: the code is peer-reviewed, in some cases programmed in pairs, or maintained by different people. In this respect, the first impression for the quality of a code is usually a matter of "reading" the aesthetics of the code and then, diving into the details of the actual implementation. This "first-look" impression can psychologically bias the software engineer, either positively or negatively and affect his/her evaluation. In this article we investigate whether code beauty (or code aesthetics) must be valued in software programs, as a proxy to the quality of the code. Specifically, we attempt to relate the notion of code beauty with code quality metrics. For this purpose, we catalogued existing beauty measures (assessing the aesthetics of images, objects, and alphanumeric displays), tailored them to match code beauty, and correlated them to structural properties that are related to Technical Debt Interest (such as coupling, cohesion, etc.). The results of the study suggest that some code beauty metrics can be considered as correlated to TD Interest; and therefore, the "first-look" impression might to some extent be representative of the quality of the reviewed code chunk.

Educating people with intellectual disabilities (ID) is a challenging process. Educators and researchers promote new methods in order to enhance the learning process and succeed in improving specific skills that people with intellectual disabilities have limitations. Serious games (SG) used in special education are considered as a successful tool for benefiting learning. In order to develop effective serious games, however, it is important to plan the design process properly. Therefore, design guidelines and principles should be thoroughly examined and accordingly selected. This paper aims to: (a) study existing serious games design frameworks; (b) extract design guidelines and principles from existing serious games for people with intellectual disabilities; (c) analyze the guidelines and principles, based on the elements of the design frameworks, which will then be used as the basis for a design framework dedicated to serious games for people with intellectual disabilities.

Mobile technology is becoming an integral part of student's life. The new mobile landscape shifts the educational ground demanding for innovative ways to create games for educational purposes. Location-based games provide new opportunities for effective learning in authentic environments. On the other hand, this game genre poses new challenges to educational practitioners that are closely related to technological advances and established pedagogical practices. The aim of this study is to investigate on the limitations and challenges of authoring tools regarding the support of new trends and standards. In the first place, we explore educational scenarios implemented in the form of location-based games and a general conceptual model that comprises common game elements is formulated. Secondly, two typical authoring tools that actively support location-based experiences and games are presented with a critical view with regard to the model presented. Finally, we draw conclusions in order to inform the design of next generation authoring tools. The platforms have been used successfully in educational settings by non-technical educational practitioners, however they miss the opportunity arising from integrating current trends and emerging standards focused on increasing learning technologies interoperability. Such trends afford game-learning analytics as the next generation move and new ways of integrating authoring and analytics tools need to be explored in order to make educational games even more impactful.

Pair Programming (PP) has been extensively used for enhancing the learning of programming. Specifically, PP is considered to: make the learning of programming more pleasant, promote collaboration and communication between the members of pairs, encourage the sharing of knowledge and skills, and even improve code quality. More recently, systems have appeared that support Distributed Pair programming (DPP). DPP is considered to maintain all the benefits of PP and in addition to allow for the distributed collaboration of pairs from anywhere and at any time. However, DPP might impose limitations as well, such as the requirement from students to configure their systems and ensure a good Internet connection. In order to draw safer conclusions on the benefits and shortcomings of DPP and maximize its effects on the learning of programming, it is necessary to investigate its impact under real world situations. This research is twofold: the effect of DPP on student performance has to be thoroughly studied; student perceptions on the benefits and shortcomings of DPP have to be investigated in order to apply it in the best possible way. The study presented in this paper focuses on the latter issue. Specifically, student perceptions on DPP assignments carried out in the context of an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) course based on Java throughout a whole semester are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. Based on this analysis some guidelines are presented for carrying out DPP assignments more effectively in the context of an OOP, Java-based course.

The Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) technique is nowadays the most popular programming technique among tertiary education institutions. However, learning OOP is a cognitively demanding task for undergraduate students. Several difficulties and misconceptions have been recorded in the literature for both OOP concepts and languages, mainly Java. This article focuses on reviewing and advancing research on the most fundamental OOP concepts, namely, the concepts of “object” and “class” and their role during program execution. The results of a long-term investigation on the subject are presented, focusing on a study exploring undergraduate students’ conceptions on “objects” and “classes.” The study advances related research on categories of conceptions on “objects” and “classes” by providing quantitative results, in addition to qualitative results, regarding the frequency of the recorded conceptions. Nearly half the students seem to comprehend the modeling and static/dynamic aspects of the concepts “object” and “class.” Implications for achieving a deep conceptual understanding of text, action, and modeling aspects of these fundamental concepts are also discussed. Information regarding the programming environments utilized in the course and key features of the applied teaching approach are presented, in order to facilitate both a better understanding of the context and a better employment of the results of the presented study. Finally, proposals for enhancing the contribution of this and similar studies are made.

The educational landscape continues to transform significantly in a way that it engages students' interest and improves learning processes. Such an example is the gradual use of educational games, which seem to be an exceptional means to motivate and engage students in ways that will make learning more challenging and interesting for them. However, although educational games are a very interesting tool that could be used in education, an interesting challenge that should be addressed is the identification of all the ways students' progress and results can be measured for examination. This way, there is a high demand for accountability regarding the measurement and analysis of enriched game based learning activities or game-based learning analytics (GBLA). This demand is especially highlighted in one of the most difficult areas of Computer Science, which is computer programming education. In this paper, we are proposing a framework that will guide the incorporation of learning analytics mechanisms in computer programming education. We demonstrate this process through the implementation of the framework in an educational Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game we have developed for the domain.

Programming environments based on an iconic, flowchart-based notation have been widely used in the context of introducing novices to programming. These tools were initially heavily based on the technology of structure editing, with the aim of alleviating the burden of focusing on the syntactic details of programming languages and giving the chance to focus on acquiring problem solving skills. The technology of program animation was also utilized, in order to allow for a better comprehension of programming structures and flow of control. Furthermore, the ability of generating syntactically correct source code from the flowchart was integrated into these tools. Recently, several advanced features were added in flowchart-based programming environments, such as support for collaborative activities and distributed pair programming and usage in mobile devices. In this paper, a thorough review of programming environments based on an iconic notation is carried out with a focus on the support provided for introducing novices to programming, as well as other important software engineering issues in a simplified and straightforward manner. Proposals for research on this field and opportunities for a better teaching and learning of software engineering are presented.

Collaboration scripts provide an integrated framework aimed to foster fruitful collaboration in collaborative learning settings. Since pair programming is also a form of collaborative learning, we explored whether collaboration scripts can improve collaboration in distributed pair programming. For this purpose, we incorporated collaboration scripts in an existing distributed pair programming system. We conducted a pilot study to evaluate the new system by a group of students. Our goal was to examine students' perceptions of computer mediated scripted collaboration and furthermore to evaluate the effectiveness of adaptive role switching in students' participation. The study showed that students' attitude toward distributed pair programming and scripted collaboration was quite positive, however they prefer to distribute tasks by themselves which led half of them not to follow system's suggestions for role distribution.

In this paper we present important results from a long-term evaluation of an ldquoobject-oriented design and programmingrdquo course. In its last form the course is based on the combined use of the microworld objectKarel and the environment BlueJ, while some important modifications on the original teaching approach based on BlueJ have been made.

The use of collections for grouping objects is very common in object oriented applications, and even small-scale programs developed by undergraduate students. One of the most popular collections is the ArrayList that according to many researchers should be emphasized over the fundamental data structure of Arrays. However, learning to use an ArrayList collection correctly is not easy. In this paper we present an analysis of undergraduate students' difficulties with ArrayLists and some proposals for supporting the learning process.

In this paper we present our findings on teaching Object Oriented Programming (OOP) with BlueJ in the context of a one-semester programming course. Specifically, we present the evolution of the course, results from its evaluation and proposals for a more effective teaching of OOP. Our proposals focus on the way that the features of BlueJ, the accompanying textbook and the well-known guidelines for teaching object orientation with Java presented by the team of BlueJ should be used, in order to avoid some underlying pitfalls.

No abstract available.

In this paper we present our findings on teaching OOP with BlueJ in the context of a one-semester programming course. We organize our findings, i.e., the difficulties, the errors, and the misconceptions that students encounter, in two categories: (a) difficulties attributed to the special characteristics of OOP, and, (b) difficulties that may be attributed to the features of the programming environment

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

We propose a new integrated programming environment, objectKarel, for teaching the object-oriented programming paradigm. Its main features are: a series of e-lessons, a special kind of structure editor, runtime error detection, program animation and recordability of students' actions. Finally, we describe the results of a pilot use of objectKarel to teach object-oriented programming to undergraduate students.

No abstract available.