Basic Computer Science Concepts Research Articles

The interdisciplinary implementation of poly-universe to promote computational thinking: Teaching examples from biological, physical, and digital education in Austrian secondary schools.

Today's teaching and didactical methods are progressively aiming to integrate digital technologies, computational thinking (CT), and basic computer science concepts into other subjects. An innovative and creative way of combining and integrating CT and teaching cross-curricular skills without digital devices is to include the game Poly-Universe (PolyUni). According to previous research, the game is expected to have a positive effect on visual perceptual progress, including isolation, and the development of shape-background skills. So far, however, comparatively few attempts have been made to explore the educational possibilities of PolyUni for different school levels and subjects, besides mathematics. Therefore, this article aims to close this gap by exploring how PolyUni can be used to promote CT in three subjects: physical education (PE), digital education (DGE), and biology (B). Furthermore, it evaluates whether the pre-defined learning objectives in those subjects have been achieved, and examines how PolyUni combines the requirements of the different curricula in Austrian secondary school, based on self-designed tasks. Additionally, further aspects of PolyUni such as engagement and collaboration are discussed. To explore the above-mentioned benefits, a mixed-methods study was implemented, whereas the workshops and accompanying teaching materials (e.g., worksheets) were developed based on the COOL Informatics concept. The participant observation method was employed for qualitative data collection, and a self-designed assessment grid as well as additional picture analysis were used for the quantitative data. PolyUni was introduced in three different workshops at Austrian secondary schools with 80 students observed and analyzed. Based on the present data, it can be assumed that PolyUni supports achieving the requirements of the different curricula and pre-defined teaching and learning objectives in a playful way. Furthermore, the game not only promotes CT in secondary school but also encourages enjoyment and collaboration between peers in biological, digital, and physical education lessons.

Penguatan Metode Computational Thinking untuk Guru Madrasah dalam Rangka Meningkatkan Minat Belajar Siswa Pasca Pandemi Covid-19

Madrasah teachers are currently considered to have lower cognitive competence when compared to formal school teachers in general, although this statement is not entirely correct. Researchers have conducted computational thinking training in several madrasa of Central Java Provinces, like MIN 1 Kendal, MTs N 1 Jepara, and MAN 1 Grobogan. Computational Thinking (CT) involves problem solving and system design by breaking it down into several stages that are effective, efficient, and comprehensive, including decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithms which are some of the basic concepts of computer science. The purpose of this study is the implementation of CT by madrasa’ teachers on each lesson to students in order to increase student learning interest. The research method used is blended learning which is a combination of an online course (introduction to Bebras Indonesia and CT) and an onsite course (training on CT and implementation of CT to students). The results showed that there was an increase in the average score of the trainees between the pre-test and post-test of the teachers at MIN 1 Kendal, MTs N 1 Jepara, and MAN 1 Grobogan i.e. 70.23%, 70.01% and 80. 64%, respectively. Furthermore, student testimonials after the implementation of CT in subjects taught by the majority of teachers at 66.79% filled in very interesting so that CT learning was very effective in increasing student learning interest in madrasah.

DEVS 형식론을 이용한 PBL과 과정중심 피드백 기반 SW/AI 교육 프로세스 모델 개발

Computational thinking is about solving problems based on the basic concepts of computer science and is an essential skill for everyone. Computational thinking are needed in the future society in the face of the 4th industrial revolution. Therefore, In this paper, we study the educational method for cultivating computational thinking by providing active feedback and utilizing PBL in online SW/AI classes. In the method of using PBL in online SW/AI classes proposed in this study, students can select the difficulty of the project to be performed, which is expected to increase the likelihood that the students will complete the project. In addition, by using social media to actively communicate with students and provide Process-Focused feedback, it is intended to increase students

Problem solved, but how? An exploratory study into students’ problem solving processes in creative coding tasks

Problem solving capabilities have often been reported by teachers as a key benefit from creative coding activities in school-age children. However, few studies to date have defined problem solving, and investigated how it is operationalised in interdisciplinary creative coding tasks. This study aims to build knowledge about students’ use of computational thinking and computer science concepts for problem solving when coding animated narratives. The research investigated students’ coding processes using data gathered from audio and device display recordings and semi-structured interviews. Results suggest limitations to the use of creative coding tasks if the expectation is to develop computational thinking and systematic problem solving strategies, or learn basic computer science concepts. They revealed that novice students rarely solved coding problems using optimal technically-based strategies despite being given explicit instruction on their use, opting instead to bypass problems by adjusting intended outcomes, or by using low level code translation strategies. Results demonstrate that engaging computational thinking or even demonstrating understanding of basic computer science concepts was not a requirement to produce a viable creative coding outcome. This study contributes new understanding of students’ coding practices when engaged in creative coding tasks in regular, non-specialist classrooms. Its findings challenge the commonly-held assumption that coding is a natural ‘vehicle’ to develop computational thinking and systematic approaches to problem solving. It also questions the learning that results from the non-technical, inefficient and often ineffective problem solving practices students employ during ‘creative coding’ tasks, that are frequently used by non-specialist teachers in response to curriculum requirements.

Bilgi İşlemsel Düşünme Üzerine Genel Bir Bakış

Computers and information technologies are increasingly becoming indispensable elements of our lives. Technological hardware and softwares are widely used in the field of education as well as in many fields such as engineering, business world, and health sector. In order to use these technologies efficiently, it is important for learners to understand the working logic of computers. One of the methods developed to achieve this is computational thinking. Although computational thinking is a relatively new concept, it is a rapidly developing concept. Computational thinking can be defined as a way of thinking that involves solving problems, designing systems, and making sense of human behavior using the basic concepts of computer science. The aim of this study is to discuss various dimensions of computational thinking with sources from the literature. In this context, firstly, the definitions of computational thinking were emphasized, and then information about the history and development process of computational thinking was given. The dimensions of computational thinking and the competencies related to computational thinking such as critical thinking, creative thinking, and algorithmic thinking are included. Finally, information is given about applications on computational thinking such as Google Education, Bebras, and Code.org.

Quantifying graphemic variation via large text corpora

Abstract The use of some basic computer science concepts could expand the possibilities of (manual) graphematic text corpus analysis. With these it can be shown that graphematic variation decreases constantly in printed German texts from 1600 to 1900. While the variability is continuously lesser on a text-internal level, it decreases faster for the whole available writing system of individual decades. But which changes took place exactly? Which types of variation went away more quickly, which ones persisted? How do we deal with large amounts of data which cannot be processed manually anymore? Which aspects are of special importance or go missing while working with a large textual base? The use of a measurement called entropy quantifies the variability of the spellings of a given word form, lemma, text or subcorpus, with few restrictions but also less details in the results. The difference between two spellings can be measured via Damerau-Levenshtein distance. To a certain degree, automated data handling can also determine the exact changes that took place. Afterwards, these differences can be counted and ranked. As data source the German Text Archive of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities is used. It offers for example orthographic normalization – which is extremely useful –, preprocessing of parts of speech and lemmatization. As opposed to many other approaches the establishment of today’s normed spellings is not seen as the aim of the developments and is therefore not the focus of the research. Instead, the differences between individual spellings are of interest. Afterwards intra- and extralinguistic factors which caused these developments should be determined. These methodological findings could subsequently be used for improving research methods in other graphematic fields of interest, e. g. computer-mediated communication.

A Blended Learning Approach for an Introductory Computer Science Course

In this paper, we present our experience with redesigning an introductory computer science course for (electrical) engineers with blended learning concepts. It is a large mandatory course with eight credit points over the course of two semesters, where first year electrical engineers learn how to program with Arduino, C and Python. Additionally, they need to cover basic computer science concepts such as binary numbers, Boolean algebra, encodings, finite state machines and object-oriented programming. We designed the course to cover the fields that are most relevant to our students’ future careers. With the new format, students declare they are much more engaged with the course, they drop the course less often and they actually achieve better exam results. We completely re-structured the course, introduced inverted classroom elements and hackathons and we continuously optimized and adapted the course. The main focus is on hands-on-experience and teamwork, which we mostly achieve by the use of hackathons. In this paper, we described the contents and teaching concepts of the course and we discussed the achieved results.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ НАВЧАЛЬНИХ КОМП’ЮТЕРНИХ ІГОР У ПОЧАТКОВІЙ ШКОЛІ

In the article the methodical aspects and psychological and pedagogical conditions of use of educational computer games in elementary school were analyzed. Based on the analysis of scientific and practical research, the main requirements for the development of computer gaming environments are considered; the ways of introducing the relevant software into the educational process of the primary school are analyzed. The computer is considered as an additional pedagogical tool in the child development system. Pay attention to computer games that are directly related to non-computer games or allow the inclusion of a computer game in role-playing and other organizational forms of play for primary school pupils. Emphasized the difference between developing computer programs from so-called commercial computer games. The development of a computer game learning environment for primary school requires a preliminary analysis of the operational and content aspects of pupils learning activities, the development of descriptions and transformations of objects that are modeled in learning tasks, including relevant software. The role of computer game learning environment for primary school pupils is outlined. In particular, it’s use allows: to form pupils in the concept of basic concepts of computer science; to acquire initial practical skills in using information and communication technologies; to develop algorithmic and logical thinking and creative abilities of primary school pupils; to increase the informational and algorithmic culture of pupils. In the process of the game pupils will learn what the compilation is and where the computer is used; get acquainted with the history of computing devices and new computer programs, learn about the World Wide Web, learn to work with the keyboard, mouse, draw, perform calculations, develop their own projects. Are made conclusions about the use of educational computer games to enhance the cognitive activity of primary school pupils, to improve not only the content of learning, but also improving the means and forms of learning process, it’s intensification and individualization.

Teaching Computer Science Concepts Through Robotics to Elementary School Children

Studying computer science (CS) in elementary schools has gained more and more popularity during recent years. However, students at such an early age face difficulties when first engaging with CS. Robotics has been proposed as a medium for teaching CS to young students, because it reifies concepts in a tangible object and because of the excitement of working with robots. We asked: What CS concepts can elementary-school students learn and understand from the participation in a robotics-based CS course?Students from four second-grade classes (ages 7-8) were taught CS concepts using Thymio educational robot and its graphical software development environment. The syllabus was based on existing learning materials that were adapted to the cognitive level of the students. A taxonomy of six levels was created to characterize the learning outcomes of the course. The students' abilities were investigated using four questionnaires that were based on the taxonomy. In addition, field observations of the lessons were recorded.The analysis showed that the students were very engaged with the robotics activities and were highly motivated. They did learn basic CS concepts, although they found it difficult to create and run their own programs. There was a gap between the students' abilities regarding advanced concepts as reflected in the classroom activities and their performance on the questionnaires that they answered without the robot.Â

The perceptions of using instant interaction applications for enhancing peer discussion in a flipped classroom

This study attempted to use the application software installed on students' smartphones as an instant interactive tool in the classroom in a university course on basic computer science concepts. This study compared two different systems. One instant interaction application provided the students with multimedia feedback in time sequence, while the other showed the students' responses ranked by the number of students who 'liked' them. The students were divided into verbalisers and visualisers using a learning style questionnaire for comparison of students with different learning styles using the two systems. The results showed no significant difference between the two systems in terms of perceived usefulness, ease-of-use or enjoyment. The average frequency of the messages produced by the students using the multimedia-oriented system was higher than that for the like-ranking system on average at the beginning. However, the average frequency of messages produced by the students using the multimedia-oriented system decreased considerably week by week, and was fewer than those produced by the students using the like-ranking system in the fourth week. The results also showed that the visualisers perceived higher enjoyment than the verbalisers when using the interactive system showing responses in like-ranking sequence.

Use of Robots and Tangible Programming for Informal Computer Science Introduction

Children are exposed to technology, computer programs and games quite early but they only possess surface understanding about requirements for their realization. Children in 1st and 2nd grade (ages 7 – 9) are already familiar with basic computer science concepts, mainly through experience with more or less intelligent toys (robots). Taking mentioned into account introducing concepts of programming and behavior is required in early education. Results of the research based on specially made set of cards and robots used to encourage deep logical thinking and provide more immersive experience are presented in this paper.

Coding Design of Positional Information for Robust Morphogenesis

Robust positioning of cells in a tissue against unavoidable noises is important for achieving normal and reproducible morphogenesis. The position in a tissue is represented by morphogen concentrations, and cells read them to recognize their spatial coordinates. From the engineering viewpoint, these positioning processes can be regarded as an information coding. Organisms are conjectured to adopt good coding designs with high reliability for a given number of available morphogen species and their chemical properties. To answer, quantitatively, the questions of how good coding is adopted, and subsequently when, where, and to what extent each morphogen contributes to positioning, we need a way to evaluate the goodness of coding. In this article, by introducing basic concepts of computer science, we mathematically formulate coding processes in morphogen-dependent positioning, and define some key concepts such as encoding, decoding, and positional information and its precision. We demonstrate the best designs for pairs of encoding and decoding rules, and show how those designs can be biologically implemented by using some examples. We also propose a possible procedure of data analysis to validate the coding optimality formulated here.

Scheduling on parallel machines considering job-machine dependency constraints

Abstract We consider a multi-purpose machine scheduling problem, where jobs should be executed in some machine belonging to a given subset of the set of machines. The problem is P M P M | r j ; p j = 1 | ∑ w j U j , with n independent unit-time jobs, time window constraints, m identical parallel multi-purpose machines, and the minimization of the total weighted number of tardy jobs. The best previous complexity for this problem is O ( n 2 m ( n + log m ) ) , employing network flow techniques. We develop an algorithm that uses basic concepts of computer science to handle more efficiently successive nesting of on-time jobs, with O ( n 3 ) overall time complexity.

Using reinforcement learning to introduce artificial intelligence in the CS curriculum

There are many interesting topics in artificial intelligence that would be useful to stimulate student interest at various levels of the computer science curriculum. They can also be used to illustrate some basic concepts of computer science, such as arrays. One such topic is reinforcement learning - teaching a computer program how to play a game or traverse an environment using a system of rewards and punishments. There are reinforcement learning projects that can be used at all levels of the computer science curriculum. This paper describes a few examples of reinforcement learning and how they might be used.

Teaching computer science with robotics using Ada/Mindstorms 2.0

We present one approach to teaching basic computer science concepts with robotics, using an Ada interface to Lego Mindstorms ™ . We show simple problems put to students with no programming experience, discuss the solutions, and for each concept explain the advantages of using robots to teach it.

Instrumentation

A new method of teaching traditional concepts of CS1-CS2 is discussed. The new method uses real-time data acquisition, teaming, and interdisciplinary courseware to illustrate basic computer science concepts. We present a series of experiments and the corresponding software engineering elements. These experiments have proved to be motivating for a broad spectrum of students.

The cockpit control language: a pilot-centered avionics interface

Abstract As automation becomes more sophisticated and complex, there is increasing concern about the time and cost of training pilots to use it, and the possibility of pilot errors. In this sense, the evolution of avionics systems is emulating the evolution of personal computers in the 1980s. In the early days of personal computing, users had to learn some basic computer science concepts and an obscure command language with only passing resemblance to natural language. Because the command language was highly codified and condensed, the user had to commit apparently arbitrary syntax rules to memory, and if the user made an error, such as reversing the source and destination drives in the “copy” command, the results could be catastrophic (in this case, erasing the file that was intended to be saved and saving the one that was intended to be erased). The personal computer industry responded to the widespread perception that computers were difficult to use by developing graphic user interfaces. Today, most users can perform rudimentary operations on a personal computer with little or no training or reference to the manual. It is possible that the same type of advance could be achieved with avionics systems, so that almost any trained pilot could operate a new piece of avionics with little or no training in its specific operation.

A seminar course in object oriented programming

The emerging technology of object oriented programming is just beginning to be introduced into the computer science curriculum. In most schools, it will be introduced first at the more advanced levels, prior to inclusion in introductory courses, even though the object oriented paradigm may be more suitable for teaching basic computer science concepts. This paper contains the experiences gained teaching a seminar on object oriented programming to a small group of mixed graduate and undergraduate students at a school with no doctoral program. The successes and difficulties faced by both students and instructor are explored.

Using microcomputers to teach computer science

This paper reports the author's progress toward developing a microcomputer laboratory suitable for teaching some of the basic concepts of computer science. The rationale for this approach is presented, followed by a description of the hardware and software environment thus far developed. Finally we present two course outlines: one for an undergraduate laboratory course in computer systems and another for a graduate course in microcomputer systems design for engineers.

Computer concepts possessed by seventh-grade children

American society is rapidly becoming computer-oriented, and this fact has implications for the school curriculum. It is safe to predict that the basic concepts of computer science will eventually become a part of the elementary and secondary curriculum.