Informatics in Education

The development of communication and other soft skills among computer science students is not usually an easy task. Often, curricula focus on technical skills, with team projects being used for the improvement of communication skills. However, these teams usually comprise solely of computer science students. In this paper, we present a didactical methodology, called MIMI, which can be used in a short, intensive, programme for undergraduate students. This methodology has been implemented in real projects that have run annually since 2014. We advocate the use of team-based projects, with an important requirement that each team is both multidisciplinary and multinational. Additionally, the period of teamwork is short and intensive. A significant role in the project is given to team mentors. A mentor is a person, usually a university lecturer, who helps the team organize their work and tracks if the team’s planned didactical results are being achieved. The program has proved to stimulate an increase of soft skills among the students who participated and, in particular, among the computer science students. The detailed description of our process will allow others to implement and build similar events in their university or company environments, the focus of which is a Multinational, Intercultural, Multidisciplinary & Intensive (MIMI) methodology approach.

The Testing Algorithmic and Application Skills (TAaAS) project was launched in the 2011/2012 academic year to test first year students of Informatics, focusing on their algorithmic skills in traditional and non-traditional programming environments, and on the transference of their knowledge of Informatics from secondary to tertiary education. The results of the tests clearly show that students start their studies in Informatics with underdeveloped algorithmic skills, only a very few of them reaching the level of extended abstract. To find reasons for these figures we have analyzed the students' problem solving approaches. It was found that the students, almost exclusively, only consider traditional programming environments appropriate for developing computational thinking, algorithmic skills. Furthermore, they do not apply concept and algorithmic based methods in non-traditional computer related activities, and as such, mainly carry out ineffective surface approach methods, as practiced in primary and secondary education. This would explain the gap between the expectations of tertiary education, the students' results in the school leaving exams, and their overestimation of their knowledge, all of which lead to the extremely high attrition rates in Informatics.

Under the auspices of a DAAD funded educational project, a subproject devoted to different aspects of teaching the Java programming language started several years ago. The initial intention of the subproject was to attract members of the subproject to prepare some teaching materials for teaching essentials of the Java programming language. During the last two years, some advanced Java topics have been selected and appropriate teaching materials have been produced. The available pool of common teaching materials can be used in a wide range of university courses in participating countries. In this paper we share some of the results and experiences collected during the subproject that come from intensive use of the prepared teaching materials for a variety of Java topics in different countries and universities.

In the project ``Self-guided Learning in Teaching Mathematics - SEC II'' (SelMa), five authoring schools are working out scenarios, media and materials for phases of self-guided learning, which will be tested systematically by 10 trial schools with regard to their everyday suitability. In this paper three approaches to such learning arrangements (independent learning centre, jigsaw classroom and learning at stations) are being outlined and relevant experiences are being made available. Learning diaries prove to be useful for the learners' reflection of their learning process. The development as well as the management of such learning arrangements does place new demands on the teachers.