Understanding about the objectives of ICT literacy and the ways in which it should be enhanced vary. A comprehensive theoretical framework for the analysis of notions of ICT literacy is presented. Current notions of ICT literacy in different segments of policymaking and implementation in Australia are analysed and compared. Two dimensions (intended and implemented) and three theoretical perspectives (ICT policy, literacy policy and teaching and learning) are covered in this analysis. Similarities and differences in the understanding of ICT literacy at the national and regional levels and in various segments of decision-making and implementation are revealed. The complexity of the ICT literacy phenomenon is described. It is shown that, at the intended level, the formation of the notion of ICT literacy is strongly influenced by thinking about ICT literacy in ICT and educational policies. At the implemented level, the notion of ICT literacy is strongly influenced by various local factors and even implementation routines.
Currently virtual learning environments (VLEs) and learning objects (LOs) repositories are under active implementation into general education and vocational training system in Lithuania. The article aims to review LOs interoperability standards development tendencies as well as to compare VLEs under existing well-developed pedagogical and technical evaluation frameworks in order to suggest the most suitable one for wider implementation to support active socio-constructivist pedagogies in in-service teacher training and overall in Lithuanian general education and vocational training systems.
We have applied Problem-Based Learning (PBL) on an introductory programming course for several years with positive results. In this paper we present the outcomes and discuss our experiences of applying a modified version of PBL such that needs less tutoring resources and could better be used in large-scale courses, too.
PBL has many positive effects on studying: Students report that they liked the social aspect of studying in a group. Generally students appreciated the possibility to be active participants in a course. On the other hand, group dynamic difficulties, tolerance of uncertainty and demanding studying skills caused problems that were too hard to overcome to some students. In this paper we introduce different versions of PBL, discuss efficiently and inefficiently working PBL groups and present their characters. We also discuss the possible reasons for differently working groups. Finally, we give some suggestions for interventions that might help the PBL groups to work better.
The paper argues for the importance of the constructivist learning theory to software development education. Constructivism frames learning less as the product of passive transmission than a process of active construction whereby learners construct their own knowledge based upon prior knowledge and experience. Now that a number of software development courses offer project-based teaching, it seems that the importance of a constructivist perspective has been implicitly well-taken in the current practice. What these approaches explicitly lack is a concrete methodology of how to carry out the constructivist perspective and its consequences for learning. This paper reports on a constructivist approach to object-oriented software development at the undergraduate level. It explores methodological aspects of the approach and discusses the results from its evaluation.
This paper reports a multi-national, multi-institutional study to investigate Computer Science students' understanding of software design and software design criteria. Student participants were recruited from two groups: students early in their degree studies and students completing their Bachelor degrees. Computer Science educators were also recruited as a comparison group. The study, including over 300 participants from 21 institutions in 4 countries, aimed to understand characteristics of student-generated software designs, to investigate student recognition of requirement ambiguities, and to elicit students' valuation of key design criteria. The results indicate that with increases in education, students use fewer textual design notations and more graphical and standardized notations and that they become more aware of ambiguous problem specifications. Yet increased educational attainment has little effect on students' valuation of key design characteristics.
In the present paper, a qualitative research of the cognitive skills of experienced software developers is presented. The data for the research was gathered using the Delphi method. The respondents were 11 software developers who have worked at least five years after their graduation. Two questionnaire rounds were conducted. In the first round, the respondents mentioned altogether 32 different skills. In the second round, 10 of the respondents answered and evaluated the difficulty of these 32 skills (e.g., does the skill efficiently differentiate experts from novices). The results are divided into two categories: composition and comprehension. Approximately 40% of the skills were classified into the category ``comprehension.'' For each skill, the evaluated degree of difficulty of the skill is presented. In the category comprehension, skills related to comprehension of a program or a problem as a whole were evaluated as the most difficult.
The present paper has two parts. The first part is a trend analysis from the period 1990-2004 and the second part is a cross-sectional analysis from the year 2004. In both parts, the purpose was to find the most common technical skills sought in American job advertisements for software developer positions. Unlike in previous researches, also distributed technology skills were analyzed thoroughly because as a consequence of World Wide Web technology, these skills are required now more often than ten years ago. According to the trend analysis, the mean of the number of required technical skills increased from 3.6 to 7.7, and the technical requirements have changed as more versatile. The proportion of distributed technology skills increased very strongly: from 0% in 1990 to 65.1% in 2004. According to the cross-sectional analysis, the top five skills sought in 2004 were Windows, Java, C++, SQL, and Unix. In addition, implications to computer science education are considered.
Students of proof theory, a branch of formal logic, can benefit from computerized tools. We describe the principles behind one such tool called ProEd. This tool is targeted especially at novice students, and therefore it is designed to support effortless exploratory use. We moreover argue that focusing on root-first proof construction in Sequent proof systems helps attain this effortlessness.
This paper examines results from a multiple-choice test given to novice programmers at twelve institutions, with specific focus on annotations made by students on their tests. We found that the question type affected both student performance and student annotations. Classifying student answers by question type, annotation type (tracing, elimination, other, or none), and institution, we found that tracing was most effective for one type of question and elimination for the other, but overall, any annotation was better than none.
This paper presents results from three interrelated studies focusing on introducing TRAKLA2 to students taking courses on data structures and algorithms at the University of Turku and \rAbo Akademi University in 2004. Using TRAKLA2 they got acquainted with a completely new system for solving exercises that provided them with automatic feedback and the possibility to resubmit their solutions. Besides comparing the students' learning results, a survey was made with 100 students on the changes in their attitudes towards web-based learning environments. In addition, a usability evaluation was conducted in a human-computer interaction laboratory.
Our results show that TRAKLA2 considerably increased the positive attitudes towards web-based learning. According to students' self-evaluations, the best learning results are achieved by combining traditional exercises with web-based ones. In addition, the numerical course statistics were clearly better than in 2003 when only pen-and-paper exercises in class were used. The results from the usability test were also very positive: no severe usability problems were revealed; in fact, the results indicate that the system is very easy to learn and user-friendly as a whole.