Computer science is an important subject not only for those who want to become computer scientists but also for everyone because it develops necessary skills for different fields. Upper secondary school is a critical time for making the choice regarding further studies. However, students' choices can be influenced by the organization of computer science (CS) education in upper-secondary schools or the availability of opportunities to study CS. As schools in Estonia have a high degree of autonomy, the aim of this research is to give an overview of the organization of CS education at the upper secondary level in Estonian schools and find out how it influences further studies in the information technology (IT) field. Three research questions were set for the research: (1) How is the teaching of computer science organized in different upper secondary schools, and what kind of additional activities are conducted to support it? (2) What support elements and obstacles are identified by school leaders in computer science education? (3) Are the supporting and hindering factors in school related to further study in the field of IT? The sample of the research consists of 30 different upper secondary schools (18.5 % of all schools of this type) in Estonia. Data was collected from the schools' curricula and school principals' questionnaires. The SPSS program was used for data processing and chi-square test and correlation analyses were performed. The study revealed that the organization of computer science education can be very variable across schools in Estonia. There are schools with compulsory courses, schools with elective courses, and those with both options. There are schools where computer science is not taught at all and schools where 7 different CS courses are offered. More than half of the schools cooperate with universities, and half of the schools get support to teach CS from the local government. A lack of qualified teachers and quality learning content was identified as hindering factors by both, the schools that teach computer science and those that do not. Principals of the schools where CS is not taught are significantly more concerned about the curriculum being overloaded, as opposed to those of the schools where CS is taught. On average, 13 % of all students choose IT as their further field of study. It was found that the more computer science courses a school offers, the more students proceed to study IT. In addition, students from the schools that cooperate with universities and other partners are more likely to continue their studies in the IT field. On the other hand, significantly fewer students proceed with their studies in IT if they come from schools where principals identified obstacles such as insufficient technical bases, missing technological support, overloaded curriculum, and limited interest of students. The results can be useful in understanding how different approaches to teaching computer science can affect the choice of further studies and what can be done, based on this, to improve computer science education in upper secondary schools.

Underrepresentation of females in Computer Science (SC) courses, mostly in programming education, is a widely reported phenomenon and several studies have investigated gender differences in motivation and preferences. However, there are few studies about gender differences in different course activities and gender differences in database courses. “Databases” is one of the introductory courses at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu, the purpose of which is to provide an overview of the tools for creating and handling relational databases, to get acquainted with the basics of the theory of relational databases, and to learn SQL query language. The goal of this paper is to examine gender differences in student attendance and performance in this database course. The data from the Moodle environment was obtained from 345 students who participated in this course in spring 2023. Among them, 115 (33.3%) were female and 230 (66.7%) male students. A Chi-square test was used to compare the proportion of male and female students, and nonparametric tests were used for comparing points and aggregated variables. The results indicate that there were few statistically significant differences between female and male students. However, while female students received significantly higher course total scores compared to males, there was no statistically significant difference in grades by gender.

Success in MOOCs can be defined differently, either in terms of course completion or in terms of fulfilling learners' intentions. This paper proposes a model of using both approaches to evaluate learners’ success and identifies factors influencing them. The scoping literature review was conducted and the expectancy-value theory was integrated to create a comprehensive model. Several factors, e.g. gender, education level, learner's previous experience and earning certificates, affect both kinds of success. While factors affecting completion-based success have been quite well examined, the scoping review underscores the need for future studies to deepen the understanding of the less-explored aspects of learners' intentions-based success.

Informatics has become an essential area in nowadays life, but studies show that in many countries people lack sufficient informatics skills to meet the expectations of the employment field. As the first choices about the future are made after basic school, more attention should be paid to raise lower-secondary students' interest in informatics. In addition, the role of programming in lower education as part of informatics levels has grown rapidly in recent years. Even in this respect, informatics education with different content is offered in different schools in Estonia. The aim of the work-in-progress paper is to describe informatics teachers' vision of teaching informatics in the lower-secondary level. To achieve this aim, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 informatics teachers. The interviews were analyzed using the thematic analysis method. The main results of this preliminary study indicate that there is no universally implemented concept of teaching informatics in the lower-secondary level in Estonia and teachers' decisions about the aspects to teach depend mainly on their own knowledge and skills.

The course “Introduction to Databases” focuses on teaching Structured Query Language to non-IT students. As the learners have had no exposure to programming-related courses or programming languages and have various backgrounds, it can cause different problems, and the students might need help while solving homework assignments. The goal of this paper is to give an overview of creating troubleshooters for the introductory database course. A troubleshooter is a set of hints designed to give clues to help the student overcome the most common problematic parts of the task. Interviews with course instructors, forum posts and students' individual homework assignments were analysed for creating six troubleshooters. Statistics from the troubleshooter environment and ratings by learners were collected to assess the quality of the development work. Although the learners did not rate the created troubleshooters highly, they agreed that the use of the troubleshooters should be continued in the following years. The comments of students help to improve the troubleshooters for the next courses.

Information technology (IT) has been a popular specialty among high-school graduates for quite some time. As the number of entrants continues to grow year-by-year, the load on teaching staff also increases. Automation of teaching activities can be used to alleviate the high workload resulting from courses with hundreds of students. The aim of this study is to ascertain the processes that could be automated in the context of assessment and feedback. To gather ideas, eight one-hour mini-group interviews were conducted at the Institute of Computer Science, the University of Tartu, with 17 faculty members responsible for teaching IT courses. A qualitative approach was used for classifying the proposed ideas related to the automated assessment and automated feedback. Five main categories connected to automated assessment emerged from analyzing the codes generated based on the interviews using qualitative content analysis: use of automated assessment, instructor-related topics, negative effect on students, improvements of automated assessment, and technical concerns. Regarding automated feedback, three main categories emerged: feedback for teachers, feedback for students, and feedback for both teachers and students. The classification of ideas was used as an input for designing a schema displaying the current automated assessment system with all the potential additions suggested by the faculty members showing how, if and where exactly the proposed ideas would fit. We believe that the ideas and improvements related to automated assessment and feedback in this study, in conjunction with the detailed clarification of the process, can be a useful input for other institutes. The results will be used as a basis for implementing and improving the automation tools used hand in hand with teaching by the faculty members.

Solving individual tasks plays an important role while studying programming but teachers do not see how learners achieve the result, especially in the case of massive open online courses (MOOCs). Investigating the process of solving programming tasks can provide the teacher with valuable information. The aim of this study is to find answers to the following questions based on the log files of the programming environment Thonny: What behaviour patterns of different learners in solving programming tasks can be identified based on the example of a summary task of the MOOC “Introduction to Programming”? What types of learners can be distinguished on the basis of the behaviour patterns of task solving? The analysis of learners’ behaviour patterns was performed by observing whether they solved the task gradually or not, i.e., whether they wrote the program in parts while also testing their work in the meantime, or whether they tested it for the first time only after they had written the bulk of the solution. In the context of the solution of the MOOC summary task, one can observe that the seven learners who spent the most time and had the greatest number of error messages and repetitive error messages did not work in a gradual style. It is possible that recommending a gradual solution process can help beginners to better understand their code and find errors. It can reduce situations with many concurrent errors in the code making it difficult to understand why any specific error message was generated.

A large number of students drop out in the first year of their Bachelor's studies in Computer Science (CS). It is a problem in many countries worldwide. The aim of this study was to develop a scale for measuring the motivation and perception factors that influence students' decision to start studying Computer Science (CS), and to find the differences between these factors. A questionnaire was conducted based on expectancy-value theory to measure students' motivation and perception. Data were collected from 140 students who started their Bachelor studies in CS at a university in Estonia. The scale, named FICSS (Factors Influencing Computer Science Studies), was conducted and validated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Two models were identified: a four-factor model describing students' motivation ("Intrinsic value", "Utility value", "Social influences" and "Time for family") and a five-factor model ("Satisfaction with choice of specialty", "Social dissuasion", "Demanding work", "Salary and job security" and "Social status") that describes students' perception. "Intrinsic value" and "Utility value" were the highest-rated motivational factors. The lowest-rated factor was "Social influences". Among the perception factors, the factors with the highest means were "Satisfaction with choice of specialty" and "Salary and job security" while "Social dissuasion" was rated lowest.