Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently gained immense popularity. With impressive capabilities and versatility, large language models have quickly become a valuable tool for a wide range of applications, from chatbots and language translation to content creation and research. Generative AI can aid in the creation of computer code and provide information on a wide range of technical topics. This work-in-progress brings AI to vocational training by incorporating Cloud Computing (CC) services into a professional training and development program for software engineers, concentrating on practical skills development, hands-on experience and job-specific competencies. The approach is evaluated in the context of action research, with an emphasis on the potential benefits and challenges of code generation.

This Research-To-Practice Full Paper presents an agile framework that was created and evaluated in the context of a continuous professional training and development program in the IT industry. It was designed with the values and principles of Agile Software Development in mind and provides a learning concept to become acquainted with DevOps and Cloud Computing practices. While DevOps promises to build, test and release software faster and more reliably through methods like continuous integration, continuous deployment/delivery, automated testing and infrastructure-as-code, the integration of Cloud Computing services empowers each step of the agile life cycle through ubiquitous access to computing resources that can be provisioned with minimal effort. The paper describes the experiences of creating and applying the didactic concept as well as observations of conducted work, learning progress, motivation and achievements.

The purpose of this Research Full Paper is to systematically collect and evaluate the experiences of learners, instructors, decision-makers and IT employees of educational organizations of the secondary and tertiary sector who have been involved in cloud and ubiquitous technology adoption processes. It contributes to a better understanding of how digital transformation in educational organizations takes place, how ubiquitous access to cloud-based tools can be established within educational structures and what effects the use of cloud and ubiquitous technologies has on pedagogical work. We investigate educational use cases of cloud and ubiquitous technologies as well as their technical and practical requirements and examine adoption strategies pursued by educational organizations, the challenges faced and how to cope with them. In addition, we examine the role cloud and ubiquitous technologies have played in efforts to maintain instruction in times of Covid-19.

In programming education for non-computer science students, high diversity exists among our students, including gender, culture, age, educational background, and work experience. Introductory programming courses traditionally face high drop-out rates and poor performance, and students often perceive learning to program as difficult. Current research on diversity in programming education has primarily focused on gender differences, thus neglecting the influence of other diversity dimensions on students' performance. The project Diversity in Programming Education (DIPE) aims to fill this gap by identifying how heterogeneous groups of students can be best supported. Based on our findings, we develop a didactic concept with accompanying teaching and learning material to support different diversity dimensions actively in programming education. The concept includes competence models for measuring competences and individual learning paths. To support a flat learning curve further in university programming courses in the future, we closely work with schools and educational centres for teachers to integrate algorithmic thinking into school curricula. We empirically evaluate our concept using a mixed methods approach. In particular, we will explore the effects of our concept in our programming course and will investigate the value of these effects as perceived by lecturers and students.

Full Paper Research-to-Practice The current COVID-19 crisis has created significant challenges for schools. The growing importance of “flipping the classroom” and the needful emphasizing of online-learning were owed to the situation. To meet these requirements, materials and tasks must be adapted. The Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook “Computational Thinking with the BBC micro:bit” was developed for the introduction of Computational Thinking (CT) for 10-14-year-old pupils in Austria's secondary schools. Example tasks in the textbook are designed with an open end and present extensions with ideas for further development instead of ending abruptly. This article provides a guideline for a clear distinction in redesigning existing lessons following the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) using videos for pre-class work and live task extensions for in-class work. Which parts in the learning design must remain as live lessons and which parts can be adapted for video lessons? The respective research shows that examples that have a makerspace activity as an extension are especially helpful for an efficient determination of the appropriate part in the learning design and particularly suitable for an adaptation with ICM. The central advantage of the ICM is that it responds flexibly to the individual learning needs of each student. It allows students to take their time reviewing the material at their own pace without getting left behind. The textbook used here encourages pupils to find their own solutions by explorative learning using the block-based programming environment MakeCode. Additional information to be uncovered by the learner is provided for every single step in the accompanying online wiki website. Results from observations showed that this uncover-function, being a central element of the online material, encouraged the learners to explore their own way in finding a solution with playful elements and increased motivation. The many haptic elements of a makerspace activity are in particular useful for consolidation of the learned and are predisposed for in-class work and deepening the understanding following the constructionism theory. A Design-Based Research (DBR) approach is used to create and evaluate the redesign of a proven example task in a pilot project. Teachers, who are already familiar with the BBC micro:bit and the OER textbook, were trained on how to use the “flip-version” of an example task in their lessons and asked to develop a lesson plan for implementation. The didactic approach to redesigning the material and teacher training was evaluated during the first cycle of DBR. Results from expert interviews showed that the redesigned material and training deliver a solid ground for rework and further research on a larger scale.

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents the development of a robotics-based learning environment using an educational design research approach. Contemporary teaching should prepare learners for everyday and working life, suggesting that this can only be achieved by implementing Digital Education from primary education onwards. Since computer science education is planned to be anchored in the Austrian primary school curriculum as an interdisciplinary competence development, research into teaching methods and content suitable for this area is becoming increasingly necessary. In this context, the transfer of innovations and didactic approaches into teaching is one of the biggest challenges. Introducing coding and robotics would be a possible strategy. Educational robotics provide access to real-world scenarios and offer age-appropriate possibilities to explore digital aspects of living and working environments. Combined with narrative methods, such as digital storytelling, problem-solving skills could be developed. Since the implementation of computer science in primary education requires practical and theoretical knowledge, an educational design approach is used that takes this aspect into account and allows close interaction between researchers and practitioners. This paper focuses on investigating a feasible and effective robotics-based learning environment for developing and supporting problem-solving skills at primary school using the learning and teaching method digital storytelling. Hence, the development of the learning environment and the didactic approach gained from qualitative results of interviews and observations from the first cycle of the research project are presented, providing plausible arguments for further implementing this robotics-based learning environment.

No matter whether young or old, almost everyone likes to play games. Even though digital games have the opportunity to motivate students and foster digital skills, games in an educational context are typically described as a minor matter in class. However, games can provide an environment to work intensively on and consolidate topics from the classroom. Especially if students have the task of developing a game themselves, it is necessary to work on the topic in depth while the content is learned and anchored playfully. As part of the COOL Informatics project, which had the goal of spreading digital education and programming in the educational sector, a Game Design Challenge was launched. In this challenge, pupils, and teachers from all over Austria were invited to develop their own educational games. It is planned to relaunch the Game Design Challenge in 2021 with the goal that more and more students can be introduced to the basics of Computational Thinking.

Full paper. One of the biggest challenges in education is the transfer of innovations and new didactic approaches into the school system. To ensure a high standard of teaching, it is essential that the teachers' expertise, pedagogical content knowledge as well as digital competences are continuously improved by further training. In-service training for teachers is offered in different settings (short-, middle- and long term), with advantages and disadvantages. Two aspects that correlate positively are the costs and the sustainable outcome of these trainings. With these aspects in mind the Educational Pyramid Scheme (EPS) is currently being developed and implemented as part of an Erasmus Plus project. It is an innovative concept that aims at spreading new learning contents and methods in a relatively short time within the school system, with low costs and high effect. It is inspired by the economical pyramid scheme, which is designed to create value through the exploitation of business opportunities. The transaction content of the Educational Pyramid Scheme refers to methods or strategies that are being exchanged, and to the resources and capabilities that are required to enable the exchange. According to a train-the-trainer principle, teachers and pupils will be qualified to be trainers, who then spread their knowledge and skills to people in their school and beyond. The EPS contains three different functions or roles: multipliers (teachers and scientists), mentors (teachers) and tutors (pupils). The motivation to participate is maintained with a benefit system adapted for each target group. The training of target groups follows high qualitative standards and therefore presents different phases: input, practical phase and reflection. This paper describes the development of the EPS and its first implementation in the framework of the Austrian mandatory curriculum "Basic Digital Education" including computational thinking and programming. It presents some qualitative results gained so far from interviews and observation, which are satisfactory and deliver good arguments for the further implementation of the EPS.

Despite great effort in research and teaching as well as in raising women's quotas in the public sector and in enterprises, a gender gap in computer science can still be observed. The reasons are manifold, including the lack of interest of girls because of existing stereotypes of male nerds, misconceptions in the field of computer science, and concrete differences in students' self-concept and performance. Girls do not choose schools or studies in the field of computer science because working on computers or coding is unattractive to them. Research shows poorer performance, missing interest, and lower self-concept for girls in secondary computing education as well as a high dropout rate of female students in computer science courses at the bachelor's level. Software development exams contribute to those high dropout rates, and women often choose a different subject or even stop their university education altogether. This leads to fewer female employees in the field of computer science, and this situation calls for special measures at several levels. The current paper provides an overview of the initiatives of our university that aim to address several aspects of the gender gap. The programs offered aim to (1) increase interest in computer science and recruit (highly) gifted girls for our talent programs, (2) recruit and support female bachelor's and master's students in computer science, and (3) redesign programming courses and teaching materials to reduce the gender gap in performance and support, especially for female students. This study also describes a "cyber tutoring" program in which highly gifted girls between 13 and 16 years collaborate with and are supervised by female role models in higher positions in STEM. The evaluation results gained in the first year of this case study are promising and suggest that the extension and further development of the program would be advantageous.

Innovative Practice Work in Progress Paper. Grammar is often taught explicitly in the course of foreign language instruction despite potential misgivings about the details of effectiveness. Different approaches rest on different conceptual and pedagogical rationales, which in turn rely on different forms of conceptual and empirical research. We seek to extend a COOL Informatics approach to grammar instruction in foreign language teaching. COOL Informatics is the acronym for Cooperative and Computer Science supported Open Learning and adopts a neurodidactic approach to teaching in general, in which processes of deduction and generalisation are supported by computational methods of storing, representing and explaining points of language usage. In addition, this represents an opportunity for cross-curricular cooperation between teaching in computer science and language. From neurodidactics we know that the learning and memorizing process in the brain can be supported by using advance organizers such as concept maps for visualizing and structuring the learning contents. With the visual language UML, the Unified Modeling Language, and other diagram types, the field of computer science offers a wide range of such advance organizers. They can be applied for quite a lot of purposes or learning and teaching situations. In this paper we focus on the benefits of computer science models for grammar instruction in foreign language classes aiming at making grammar visible, comprehensible and memorable. We present several ideas for the use of UML diagrams for describing, explaining and learning grammar rules and structures in lucid diagrams. Especially activity and class diagrams or entity-relationship diagrams seem to be very helpful as our experiences gained so far suggest. The paper describes the COOL Informatics teaching approach and it draws a connection between computer science and foreign languages. Furthermore, it shows how to use different types of UML diagrams for visualizing different aspects of grammar teaching and learning. We summarize the most important experiences and results from our last projects related to modeling and present the newest study on UML for grammar learning with some preliminary results.

This work-in-progress paper deals with the adoption of cloud computing in the education sector. In the past few years, the use of cloud-based teaching and learning environments has substantially increased. Many well-known applications have been enhanced with cloud features, but also completely new tools have emerged. This paper investigates the kind of educational tools that can be expected from the ongoing trend and are not feasible with traditional techniques and discusses potential contributions of cloud computing to the development and implementation of current digital education concepts.

Many people believe that programming is hard. This might appear true, when looking at the education, but not necessarily due to the subject itself. Often, the complexity lies in mathematical problems that can be hard to comprehend or relate to for students. Due to the current structure concerning exams, high drop-out rates are seen at university level, with students either leaving university or changing subjects. Moreover, a major gender-gap can be seen. This in turn leaves society with a growing shortage of educated programmers. Aiming to tackle this, a COOL (cooperative open learning) concept has been established, where students engage in a weekly, peer-learning and peer-teaching course. The course focuses on software development, and utilizes the COOL concept of peer-learning and peer-teaching. This concept has already been applied successfully as part of the Business Informatics bachelor program at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) in Linz, where it throughout its three running years have seen a decrease in dropouts. The connection between the implementation of the program and the lowered drop-out rate requires further observations to be established.

COOL Informatics (COOL stands for Cooperative Open Learning) is a teaching concept for beginning programmers that is based on brain-supporting teaching methods and materials. It includes several forms of cooperative learning like peer tutoring, pair programming, and talents exchange. We introduced the concept in a Java programming course of our Business Informatics bachelor program in 2018 and have been able to improve the learning outcomes (exam results) and to reduce drop-out rates compared to previous years and to reference groups of 2018.

In contrast to the field of computer-supported or computer-assisted language learning (CALL), which has been investigated intensively for the last decades since the beginning of e-learning and technology-enhanced learning, computational thinking and computer science concepts are not quite common in the context of language lessons. Computational thinking is a problem solving process that, at first sight, has not much to do with language learning. However, as demanded by Jeannette Wing in 2006, it should be taught to everyone like reading, writing and mathematics. By introducing computational thinking in language lessons e.g. through modeling we could "kill two birds with one stone": On the one hand, we can teach computational thinking and basics of computer science at all school levels even if there is no related subject, e.g. in primary schools. On the other hand, computational thinking tools like modeling can support language learning in different ways and help to train text comprehension, to acquire and elaborate vocabulary or to visualize grammar rules etc. This paper describes some creative possibilities of introducing computational thinking through modeling in language lessons in primary and secondary education. Besides best practices, it further presents some experiences and results gained from teacher observation, interviews and informal feedback from students and teachers.

Software Engineering is definitely an important subject matter and it is taught all over the world: at Universities, at Colleges, and recently also at High Schools. There are international Software Engineering curricula, standards, and certificates, but there is no manifestation of Software Engineering (and related practices) in the course syllabi at primary and secondary schools. There are good reasons for it, but based on the authors' experiences gained in combining Software Engineering topics with school projects and based on discussions with teachers and curriculum designers, this paper shows that informatics education can be much more than just programming. Even more, the paper shows that it makes sense to interweave Software Engineering topics with school projects and to motivate for the most important practices related to that field.

Software is everywhere - be it in mobile phones, in washing machines, or in cars. With it, the importance of Software Engineering is uncontested, and Software Engineering (SE) is taught all over the world: at Universities, at Colleges, and recently also at High Schools. There are international Software Engineering curricula, standards, and certificates, but there is no manifestation of Software Engineering (and related practices) in the course syllabi at primary and secondary schools. This contribution raises the question about the ideal time to start with Software Engineering at schools and reports on some first answer and lessons learned of an experiment introducing Software Engineering principles in the 3rd grade of a vocational high school (higher secondary school).

For all computer scientists the term `modeling' is well known. It displays an often-used method, which is applied in each field of computer science to investigate, describe and plan problems or structures. With the help of models, large and complex structures are divided into smaller parts, which leads to a better understanding of the problem and often provides input for the solution. With the help of different types of models, different perspectives of one problem can be observed and discussed. These processes are not only part of computer science respectively computational thinking. Problem solving skills are needed in any domain and should be trained as well as possible in primary and secondary education. This could be supported by the computer science concept of modeling including processes like reduction, decomposition, abstraction, generalization etc. and appropriate techniques like UML Unified Modeling Language or the Entity-relationship model. We suppose that a consequent use of modeling beginning in different subjects during primary and secondary education can train and improve problem-solving skills. Before being able to verify this hypothesis, it is necessary to find a way to integrate modeling in schools despite of not being part of the curriculum. This is one aim of our project “Informatics - A Child's Play”, which tries to implement different computer science concepts in different subjects of primary and secondary education. To reach this goal we firstly have to convince and train teachers. In this paper some topics of modeling are presented as they were adapted for workshops in primary and early secondary education considering the age and interests of the students as well as topics taken from their surroundings. Furthermore, we present first evaluation results concerning its acceptance and usefulness for teachers and students as well as their performance in understanding and applying modeling in different lessons.

After the promising results of the pilot phase of "Brain-based Programming", a new teaching concept for introductory programming courses based on neurodidactical principles, the empirical study continues this year in three groups. The results obtained so far in the current semester at our university are promising, too: In the first exams the students of the experimental groups achieved significantly better than their colleagues in the traditional courses and female students seem to benefit even more of the new concept. This paper describes the basics of the teaching concept "Brain-based Programming" and reports on the empirical results regarding the positive impact this concept on the learning outcomes (Cohen's d = 0.42) as well as the students' and teachers' feedback.

Brain-based teaching is neither a method nor a concept. It is rather a way of teaching that tries to support the whole learning and memory process by considering how the brain works. The concept of "Brain-based Programming" is one attempt of putting neurodidactical principles into practice in order to improve the learning out-comes in introductory programming courses. In the pilot project this aim could be achieved [1] and the results of the ongoing study in three of seven parallel groups confirm the success in part.

Learning languages can be hard. As the yearly results of the course “Introduction to structured and object-based programming” at our university show, learning the first programming language might be even harder. Many students complain about the difficulty of the course and fail in the exam. With the desire to support the students and enhance the learning outcomes we initiated the project “Brain-based Programming”. The basic question is: “How can learning to program be made easier?” The answer may come from the interdisciplinary field of neurodidactics that offers many general suggestions for improving teaching and designing teaching material. But concrete examples for computer science education are scarce, and empirical research is still missing. This was the impetus for the project “Brain-based Programming” that aims at (1) creating and evaluating a brain-based script for beginners in Java programming and at (2) implementing and evaluating brain-based teaching methods in the programming course. In the pilot phase we conducted a didactic experiment in one of seven parallel groups and combined brain-based teaching methods and exercises. The results demonstrate the success of the experiment and support the hypothesis that learning is more effective when it considers how the brain learns and follows neurodidactical principles.

Learning a programming language is hard as the yearly results of an introductory course at our university show. For many students it even seems to be an insurmountable hurdle. With the desire to support students and enhance the learning outcomes, the concept of Brain-based Programming was developed and successfully implemented in one of seven parallel programming courses.