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Informatics in schools is in a different situation in each country, whether barely present or fully integrated into a national curriculum. In this position paper we discuss the reasons (''why'') behind teaching informatics to all students (''who''), the shape that this should take (''what''), and offer case studies of two countries that have implemented it in differing ways (and to differing extents): England and Denmark, including ''how'' they initiated this change. We find that although England has been successful at introducing informatics at all ages, it is very programming focused. Denmark offers a more rounded curriculum suitable for all students, but progress has been slow at implementing it nationwide. Important issues of equity remain unsolved and overlooked, especially around special educational needs and disabilities.

Microworlds have been proposed as an educational approach for engaging students and increasing motivation. However, the use of microworlds has largely been studied in the initial phases of learning to program (or entire courses). We adopted a microworld project at the end of our CS1 course to investigate its use in teaching students composition and creation of larger programs rather than initial familiarity with programming constructs. We here compare the impact of using a scaffolded, microworld project over a (previously used) non-scaffolded, non-microworld project. Based on data from N=303 students exposed to the two kinds of projects (145 in 2022 vs 158 in 2023), we compare the two cohorts according to a test of learning (TOL) based on the final exam grades. In 2023, we studied the impact further by considering the feel of learning (FOL) based on a qualitative student survey. The results show that the student grade-point average (TOL) increased significantly when we adopted the microworld project. Further, the microworld project appears to produce a high FOL.

The recent advent of highly accurate and scalable large language models (LLMs) has taken the world by storm. From art to essays to computer code, LLMs are producing novel content that until recently was thought only humans could produce. Recent work in computing education has sought to understand the capabilities of LLMs for solving tasks such as writing code, explaining code, creating novel coding assignments, interpreting programming error messages, and more. However, these technologies continue to evolve at an astonishing rate leaving educators little time to adapt. This working group seeks to document the state-of-the-art for code generation LLMs, detail current opportunities and challenges related to their use, and present actionable approaches to integrating them into computing curricula.

Recent years have seen an increase in activities geared towards making Computer Science courses available to all K-12 students. However, due to administrative regulations, such activities and their implementation often need to be localized on a national or even local context; these constraints, often paired with subtle but important terminology differences, hinder those wanting to compare the status quo across the boundaries of administrative units and to draw on experiences made elsewhere.

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.

This special session will proved information about the status of work related to Masters programs in Computing. Specifically, the session will describe work completed in the following areas: the categorization of masters programs in computing, the development of curriculum recommendations for masters programs in software engineering, the collaborative work with the Association for Information Systems on the Masters program in Information Systems

Programming is recognized as one of seven grand challenges in computing education. Decades of research have shown that the major problems novices experience are composition-based---they may know what the individual programming language constructs are, but they do not know how to put them together. Despite this fact, textbooks, educational practice, and programming education research hardly address the issue of teaching the skills needed for systematic development of programs. We provide a conceptual framework for incremental program development, called Stepwise Improvement, which unifies best practice in modern software development such as test-driven development and refactoring with the prevailing perspective of programming methodology, stepwise refinement. The conceptual framework enables well-defined characterizations of incremental program development. We utilize the conceptual framework to derive a programming process, STREAM, designed specifically for novices. STREAM is a carefully down-scaled version of a full and rich agile software engineering process particularly suited for novices learning object-oriented programming. In using it we hope to achieve two things: to help novice programmers learn faster and better while at the same time laying the foundation for a more thorough treatment of more advanced aspects of software engineering. In this article, two examples demonstrate the application of STREAM. The STREAM process has been taught in the introductory programming courses at our universities for the past three years and the results are very encouraging. We report on a small, preliminary study evaluating the learning outcome of teaching STREAM. The study indicates a positive effect on the development of students’ process competences.

Computing scientists generally agree that abstract thinking is a crucial component for practicing computer science.

Example programs play an important role in learning to program. They work as templates, guidelines, and inspiration for learners when developing their own programs. It is therefore important to provide learners with high quality examples. In this paper, we discuss properties of example programs that might affect the teaching and learning of object-oriented programming. Furthermore, we present an evaluation instrument for example programs and report on initial experiences of its application to a selection of examples from popular introductory programming textbooks.

Adoption of the Bologna Accord in the European Higher Ed-ucation Area (EHEA) represents a concerted move towards harmonisation of educational outcomes in higher education at the Bachelor, Masters and PhD levels. At a time when European systems are undergoing signif-icant examination and modification, this project addresses the need for greater understanding of the nature of Mas-ters level education in the Informatics disciplines across Eu-rope and the United States. The poster presents the cur-rent findings of the project, and is intended to prompt dis-cussion about the content and expected outcomes of such programmes world-wide.

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We present a brief overview of a model for the human cognitive architecture and three learning theories based on this model: cognitive load theory, cognitive apprenticeship, and worked examples (a key area of cognitive skill acquisition). Based on this brief overview we argue how an introductory object-oriented programming course is designed according to results of cognitive science and educational psychology in general and cognitive load theory and cognitive skill acquisition in particular; the principal techniques applied are: worked examples, scaffolding, faded guidance, cognitive apprenticeship, and emphasis of patterns to aid schema creation and improve learning. As part of the presentation of the course, we provide a characterization of model-driven programming---the approach we have adopted in the introductory programming course. The result is an introductory programming course emphasizing a pattern-based approach to programming and schema acquisition in order to improve learning.

Predicting the success of students participating in introductory programming courses has been an active research area for more than 25 years. Until recently, no variables or tests have had any significant predictive power. However, Dehnadi and Bornat claim to have found a simple test for programming aptitude to cleanly separate programming sheep from non-programming goats. We briefly present their theory and test instrument.

Giving students an appreciation of the benefits of using design patterns and an ability to use them effectively in developing code presents several interesting pedagogical challenges. This paper discusses pedagogical lessons learned at the "Killer Examples" for Design Patterns and Objects First series of workshops held at the Object Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) conference over the past four years. It also showcases three "killer examples" which can be used to support the teaching of design patterns.

In order to improve the course design of a CS1 model-driven programming course we study potential indicators of success for such a course. We explain our specific interpretation of objects-first. Of eight potential indicators of success, we have found only two to be significant at a 95% confidence interval: math grade from high school and course work. The two significant indicators explain 24.2% of the variation of the exam grade. The result concerning math grade contradicts earlier findings. We discuss four aspects of our research: the explanation power of the potential success indicators, the impact of our findings on teaching, limits of what to conclude from the available data, and the variety of the notion "objects-first". Because of the variety of interpretations of "objects-first", the present research is necessary as a supplement to earlier research in order to make generalizable results on the success factors for objects-first programming.

Is it possible to teach dynamic polymorphism early? What techniques could facilitate teaching it in Java. This panel will bring together people who have considered this question and attempted to implement it in various ways, some more completely than others. It will also give participants an opportunity to explore the topic and to share their own ideas.

One of the most important goals of an introductory programming course is that the students learn a systematic approach to the development of computer programs. Revealing the programming process is an important part of this; however, textbooks do not address the issue -- probably because the textbook medium is static and therefore ill-suited to expose the process of programming. We have found that process recordings in the form of captured narrated programming sessions are a simple, cheap, and efficient way of providing the revelation.We identify seven different elements of the programming process for which process recordings are a valuable communication media in order to enhance the learning process. Student feedback indicates both high learning outcome and superior learning potential compared to traditional classroom teaching.

In this paper, we show how sociocultural theories inform the design of a course in object-oriented programming. An essential learning objective within this philosophy is the programming processes as such. To move toward this learning goal, the course design incorporates a combination of the so-called person-centered and decentered approaches to apprenticeship learning. Our preliminary analysis indicates that the person-centered approach to apprentice learning has been very successful, while the decentered approach is found to be more problematic when it comes to practice. The reason behind this is discussed.

The recommendations of the Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula 2001 encompass suggestions for an object-first introductory programming course. We have identified conceptual modeling as a lacking perspective in the suggestions for CS1. Conceptual modeling is the defining characteristic of object-orientation and provides a unifying perspective and a pedagogical approach focusing upon the modelling aspects of object-orientation. Reinforcing conceptual modelling as a basis for CS1 provides an appealing course structure based on core elements from a conceptual framework for object-orientation as well as a systematic approach to programming; both of these are a big help to newcomers. The approach has a very positive impact on the number of students passing the course.

In this paper we present a new learning environment to be used in an introductory programming course for students that are non-majors in computer science, more precisely for multimedia students with a liberal arts background.Media-oriented programming adds new requirements to the craft of programming (e.g. aesthetic and communicative).We argue that multimedia students with a liberal arts background need programming competences because programmability is the defining characteristic of the computer medium. We compare programming with the creation of traditional media products and identify two important differences which give rise to extra competences needed by multimedia designers as opposed to traditional media product designers. We analyze the development process of multimedia products in order to incorporate this in the learning process, and based on this we present our vision for a new learning environment for an introductory programming course for multimedia students.We have designed a learning environment called Lingoland with the new skills of media programming in mind that hopefully can help alleviate the problems we have experienced in teaching programming to liberal arts students.

In this paper we argue that introducing object-oriented frameworks as subject already in the CS1 curriculum is important if we are to train the programmers of tomorrow to become just as much software reusers as software producers. We present a simple, graphical, framework that we have successfully used to introduce the principles of object-oriented frameworks to students at the introductory programming level. Our framework, while simple, introduces central abstractions such as inversion of control, event-driven programming, and variability points/hot-spots. This has provided a good starting point for introducing graphical user interface frameworks such as Java Swing and AWT as the students are not overwhelmed by all the details of such frameworks right away but given a conceptual road-map and practical experience that allow them to cope with the complexity.