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Computers
Special Issues
Future Trends in Computer Programming Education
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Future Trends in Computer Programming Education

A special issue of Computers (ISSN 2073-431X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2024 | Viewed by 1962

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Stelios Xinogalos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Applied Informatics, University of Macedonia, GR-54636 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: serious games; educational games; educational environments and games for programming; programming environments and techniques; object-oriented design and programming; didactics of programming
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Teaching and learning programming is a never-ending story. It is widely accepted that learning programming is difficult and the classic approach to teaching programming, which is based on using a conventional programming language and environment for solving number and symbol-processing problems, is quite problematic. Students have to be supported, motivated and engaged in the learning process in order to comprehend the principles of programming and write good-quality code. Several types of educational programming environments and tools have been developed in recent decades, such as programming microworlds, structure editors, program/software visualization tools, and flowchart-based programming environments, among others. Several teaching approaches have also been devised based on the aforementioned tools. Moreover, extended research has been carried out regarding the best strategy for introducing novices to programming, including the imperative-first, function-first and object-first strategies, as well as the most appropriate language for each strategy.

In recent years, the educational community around the world has shown an even greater interest in teaching and learning programming as a means of promoting computational thinking, which is considered important for everyone and not just computer scientists. Today, primary school kids are educated to think computationally through specially designed programming environments, such as Scratch or the widely known “Hour of Code” games.

Another important dimension of the work around teaching and learning programming in today’s world lies in the way that “digital natives” grow up and learn. Game-based learning and educational/serious games are considered a promising approach for learning programming. Pair programming and more recently distributed pair programming are other contemporary approaches that promote collaboration among students, which is also considered important.

The objective of this Special Issue is to explore recent advances and future trends in computer programming education.

Dr. Stelios Xinogalos
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Computers is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • strategies for teaching programming (e.g., object-first, imperative-first, function-first)
  • programming languages for an introduction to programming
  • teaching approaches for an introduction to programming
  • procedural/object-oriented/web/game/etc. programming education
  • cultivating computational thinking skills through programming
  • educational programming environments
  • programming microworlds
  • structure editors
  • program/software visualization tools
  • software quality tools for education
  • tangible programming languages/environments
  • educational/serious games for programming
  • distributed pair programming

Published Papers (2 papers)

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16 pages, 269 KiB  
Article
Explain Trace: Misconceptions of Control-Flow Statements
by Oleg Sychev and Mikhail Denisov
Computers 2023, 12(10), 192; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12100192 - 24 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1178
Abstract
Control-flow statements often cause misunderstandings among novice computer science students. To better address these problems, teachers need to know the misconceptions that are typical at this stage. In this paper, we present the results of studying students’ misconceptions about control-flow statements. We compiled [...] Read more.
Control-flow statements often cause misunderstandings among novice computer science students. To better address these problems, teachers need to know the misconceptions that are typical at this stage. In this paper, we present the results of studying students’ misconceptions about control-flow statements. We compiled 181 questions, each containing an algorithm written in pseudocode and the execution trace of that algorithm. Some of the traces were correct; others contained highlighted errors. The students were asked to explain in their own words why the selected line of the trace was correct or erroneous. We collected and processed 10,799 answers from 67 CS1 students. Among the 24 misconceptions we found, 6 coincided with misconceptions from other studies, and 7 were narrower cases of known misconceptions. We did not find previous research regarding 11 of the misconceptions we identified. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Trends in Computer Programming Education)
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Review

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23 pages, 2613 KiB  
Review
Study Trends and Core Content Trends of Research on Enhancing Computational Thinking: An Incorporated Bibliometric and Content Analysis Based on the Scopus Database
by Ling-Hsiu Chen and Ha Thi The Nguyen
Computers 2024, 13(4), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13040091 - 03 Apr 2024
Viewed by 472
Abstract
Over the last decade, research on evolving computational thinking (CT) has garnered heightened attention. Assessing the publication tendencies and nucleus contents of investigations on progressing CT to direct future research initiatives, develop policies, and integrate them into instructional materials is timely and exceedingly [...] Read more.
Over the last decade, research on evolving computational thinking (CT) has garnered heightened attention. Assessing the publication tendencies and nucleus contents of investigations on progressing CT to direct future research initiatives, develop policies, and integrate them into instructional materials is timely and exceedingly essential in education. Therefore, this research reviewed publications on progressing CT to identify research trends and core contents published in the Scopus database from 2008 to May 2022. For this reason, this study applied bibliometric and content analysis to 132 selected publications. After examining bibliometrics, the findings indicate a steady increase in publications related to game-based learning (GBL) and CT, reaching a peak in 2021, with the United States emerging as the most prolific contributor in terms of authors, institutions, and countries). The leading country in citations is primarily China. The document that received the most citations is Hsu’s 2018 paper on “Computers and Education”. Analysis of keywords and themes reveals core content tendencies, emphasizing teaching methods and attitudes aimed at improving CT via GBL. These results offer valuable insights for researchers and educators to inform their future work. However, future studies may benefit from including other databases such as Web of Science (WoS) and PubMed, employing alternative bibliometric software like VOSviewer or CiteSpace, as well as collecting data from June 2022. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Future Trends in Computer Programming Education)
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