UKICER

In this paper and the talk built from it my general aim is to offer some reflections on the state of Computing Education Research (CER) right now (August 2020) – not like a review of the literature that looks only backwards, but to develop perspectives ...

Cognitive load (CL) on a learner’s working memory has emerged as an influential concept in computing education and beyond. CL is commonly divided in at least two components, intrinsic load (IL) and extraneous load (EL). We seek progress on two questions:...

Students are expected to move from one programming language (PL) to another in their computer science education. Recent work has proposed a model of PL transfer to explain how students transfer conceptual knowledge between languages. This model suggests ...

Work connecting spatial skills to computing has used course grades or marks, or general programming tests as the measure of computing ability. In order to map the relationship between spatial skills and computing more precisely, this paper picks out a ...

Creating inclusive learning environments for all students is of primary importance. Student sense of belonging is an important part of this. However, sense of belonging can show variations according to factors such as ethnicity and gender as well as ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed “emergency remote teaching” across education globally, leading to the closure of institutions across a variety of settings, from early-years through to higher education. This paper looks specifically at the impact of ...

Using two 2 x 3 in-situ experiments in an introductory programming course, we study the effect of representation and engagement on the instructional efficiency of learning materials. In the experiments, we controlled for used representation and the ...

Design thinking is a valuable component in teacher education enabling the development of creativity amongst the cohort. Studies have been developed to capture the effects of discipline specific design thinking, however design thinking amongst Computer ...

This paper describes a study of how peer assessment can be introduced to novice programmers to support programming knowledge. In the field of computer science, peer assessment is not a common approach in beginner programming courses as novice ...

Learning to program is a process that relies on learning theoretical fundamentals as well as practice, and almost always involves some type of programming environment. In order to build effective environments that support good learning for novices, it ...

Peer feedback has been shown to benefit students’ learning as it develops their critical thinking and provides more immediate feedback. It relies on the analysis by students of their peers’ work following structured criteria. We propose to apply the ...

The recent experience of delivering the United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER) conference has provided insight into the strength and vibrancy of the computing education research community within the region. UKICER, alongside ...