Informatics in Education

Although Machine Learning (ML) has already become part of our daily lives, few are familiar with this technology. Thus, in order to help students to understand ML, its potential, and limitations and to empower them to become creators of intelligent solutions, diverse courses for teaching ML in K-12 have emerged. Yet, a question less considered is how to assess the learning of ML. Therefore, we performed a systematic mapping identifying 27 instructional units, which also present a quantitative assessment of the students’ learning. The simplest assessments range from quizzes to performance-based assessments assessing the learning of basic ML concepts, approaches, and in some cases ethical issues and the impact of ML on lower cognitive levels. Feedback is mostly limited to the indication of the correctness of the answers and only a few assessments are automated. These results indicate a need for more rigorous and comprehensive research in this area.

Due to technological advancements, robotics is findings its way into the classroom. However, workload for teachers is high, and teachers sometimes lack the knowledge to implement robotics education. A key factor of robotics education is peer learning, and having students (near-)peers teach them robotics could diminish workload. Therefore, this study implemented near-peer teaching in robotics education. 4 K10-11 secondary school students were teachers to 83 K5-6 primary school students. The intervention included 4 3-hour robotics lessons in Dutch schools. Primary school students completed a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire on their STEM-attitudes and near-peer teaching experience, and a report on their learning outcomes. Interaction with near-peer teachers was observed. After the lessons, a paired-samples t-test showed that students had a more positive attitude towards engineering and technology. Students also reported a positive near-peer teaching experience. Conventional content analysis showed that students experienced a gain in programming and robotics skill after the lessons, and increased conceptual understanding of robotics. The role the near peer teachers most frequently fulfilled was formative assessor. Near-peer teachers could successfully fulfil a role as an engaging information provider. This study shows that near-peer teachers can effectively teach robotics, diminishing workload for teachers. Furthermore, near-peer robotics lessons could lead to increased STEM-attitudes.

In programming problem solving activities, sometimes, students need feedback to progress in the course, being positively affected by the received feedback. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art and practice of the feedback approaches on introductory programming. To this end, we have carried out a systematic literature mapping to understand and discuss the main approaches for providing and evaluating feedback used in the learning of novice programmers in the problem solving activity. Thus, according to a formal protocol, an automatic search was performed for papers from 2016 to 2021. As a result, 39 studies were selected for the final analysis. As a result, we propose three different categorizations: the main approaches to providing feedback, the main methods used in the evaluation and the main aspects and effects of the evaluated feedback.

There has been an active movement towards fun learning, using games in education. This article introduces the text-based serious game “Rise of the Java Emperor” that aims to support students in learning basic object-oriented programming concepts using Java. Information concerning the analysis, the design and the pilot evaluation of the game is presented. Thirty-three undergraduate and postgraduate students of an Applied Informatics Department voluntarily played and answered a questionnaire based on the MEEGA+ model, in order to investigate the perceived player experience and short-term learning as well as the acceptance of a text-based programming game by students. The results of the evaluation show that text based games can be both fun and instructional for the field of computer programming. An important issue that requires further research is how this or other programming games can be successfully combined with traditional teaching methods for enhancing the learning of programming.

The main goal of this research is to enhance the understanding of quality criteria for DB metadata for assessment and recognition as factors increasing their value in higher education (HE). To attain this goal, a case study approach centered in one HE institution was used, aiming (a) at an analysis of the status quo description of metadata of DBs issued by the HE institution to identify the value of DBs in terms of assessment and recognition procedures, and (b) a list of quality criteria for DB description metadata was proposed on the basis of academic research and on expert interview results. The results of the research demonstrate that in the institution under research, these criteria are not present in most cases of DB descriptions as teachers do not provide them. Distinct assessment and recognition criteria make an important quality factor for the DBs to become valid and valued digital credentials in HE.

This review paper presents a systematic literature review on the use of Augmented Reality (AR) in engineering education, and specifically in student’s spatial ability training, for the last decade. Researchers have explored the benefits of AR, and its application has been of increasing interest in all levels of education. Engineering students tend to have difficulties in acquiring visualization skills, and hence, AR is gaining momentum in enhancing students’ learning achievements. This paper aims to present valuable information to researchers, tutors and software developers of learning technology systems concerning the advantages and limitations of AR in spatial ability training, the incorporation of adaptivity and personalization in AR applications as well as the aspects of spatial ability having been evaluated using AR and the prevalent evaluation methods for AR applications. To this direction, a total of thirty-two (32) studies were reviewed, having been published since 2010. The findings reveal an increase in the number of studies during the last three years. One major conclusion is the improvement of learners’ spatial ability using AR in educational settings, and the noted challenge is the need for more learning content. One research gap that has been identified is the lack of personalization in the developed applications, offering space for future research. Concluding, this area is under-researched, and thus, there is scope for a lot of improvement.

While virtual learning environments (VLEs) present several advantages, such as space-time flexibility, they are still not including proper opportunities and resources for students to engage in collaborative activities with their peers. Recent approaches, for example, are based on resources that are not standard for VLEs or usual for students. Thus, their integration with VLEs is not simple. This paper conducted a theoretical investigation to identify strategies that could induce collaborative behaviours in students. These strategies were implemented as learning objects running in a VLE and a quasi-experimental research design was conducted with 133 students. The results show that the approach promotes collaborative interactions between students and also tend to improve their learning outcomes. Moreover, learning objects use a conceptualization that is already established over the e-learning community, simplifying their integration with VLEs.

Interfaces with good usability help their users complete more tasks in less time and with less effort, which gives them greater satisfaction. Given the vast array of options available to users today, usability is an important interface feature that may lead to the commercial success or failure of a software system. Despite its importance, few educational tools are available to help usability teachers and students. Knowing how to measure interface usability is one of the basic concepts that students should learn when they study the theme. This paper presents UsabilityZero, a web application to support the teaching of usability concepts to undergraduate students. By using UsabilityZero, students interact with a system displaying a reduced usability interface and, later, with the same system exhibiting an increased usability interface. Considering the use of UsabilityZero by 64 students, the differences between the interface with reduced and increased usability were: (i) 61.5% decrease in the number of clicks; (ii) 62.2% decrease in the time to perform tasks; (iii) 92.9% effectiveness increase; and (iv) a 277.3% satisfaction increase. During their experience with UsabilityZero, students learn how to measure efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction of user interfaces. After using the application, Information Systems and Computer Science students who had never been in touch with the subject could identify key usability aspects. The students’ perception of efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction as usability measures was higher than 80%. Also, they could identify some usability criteria and understand how measurements change when some of them are present in the interface design. As a result, over 92% of these students said they recognized the importance of usability to the quality of a software product, and 79% declared that their experience with the application would contribute to their professional lives.

This case study aims at ensuring preservice science teachers to acquire experience by creating paper-based mind maps (PB-MM) and digital mind maps (D-MM) in technology education and to reveal their opinions on these mind mapping techniques. A total of 32 preservice science teachers, enrolled in the undergraduate program of Science Teaching at a university in Turkey, participated in this study. During the first three weeks of the six-week study, participants created PB-MM for certain subjects in science education. For the rest of the weeks, they created D-MM by using Coggle. As data collection tool, a form, consisting of open-ended questions, was used in this study. The obtained results demonstrated that the participants generally reported positive opinions including that mind maps are beneficial and useful tools in reinforcing, assessing and visualizing learning in general, making lessons more entertaining as well as offering ease of use. It was also concluded that students can also use mind maps in teaching of other topics such as “Vitamins”, “The Earth and the Universe” and “Systems” in particular, as well as in events like meetings, presentations, brainstorming. Advantages of D-MM were listed as the possibility of adding multimedia material, ease of correction processes and the visual richness, while its disadvantage was listed as experiencing technical problems. PB-MM contribute to psychomotor development of students as well as learning by performing/experiencing. The difficulty in processes such as deleting, editing, etc. and in adding videos and images constitute the restrictions of PB-MM technique.

Creativity has emerged as an important 21st-century competency. Although it is traditionally associated with arts and literature, it can also be developed as part of computing education. Therefore, this article -presents a systematic mapping of approaches for assessing creativity based on the analysis of computer programs created by the students. As result, only ten approaches reported in eleven articles have been encountered. These reveal the absence of a commonly accepted definition of product creativity customized to computer education, confirming only originality as one of the well-established characteristics. Several approaches seem to lack clearly defined criteria for effective, efficient and useful creativity assessment. Diverse techniques are used including rubrics, mathematical models and machine learning, supporting manual and automated approaches. Few performed a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed approach regarding their reliability and validity. These results can help instructors to choose and adopt assessment approaches and guide researchers by pointing out shortcomings.