Informatics in Education

Developing an engaging and positive learning environment for learners, especially in a particular course, is one of the most creative aspects of teaching. Learning design supports the design of interventions, which are pedagogically informed, promote student-centered learning activities and make effective use of appropriate resources and technologies. In the context of this work, a framework is proposed for teaching learning design issues in tertiary education which interweaves teacher-centered activities with student-centered activities. The students are engaged in lab activities and in a learning design peer assessment project. Sustainable feedback practices are considered an integral part of the whole process. Findings drawn from an empirical study carried out during two consecutive academic years reveal that the interweaving of instruction and assessment may contribute to the understanding of the main learning design issues and to the cultivation of skills both in the development of educational applications as well as in the design of technology enhanced learning activities.

The paper focuses on the parallels, which are rooted in the simultaneous development of mathematics and informatics. Both mathematics and informatics are based on problem-solving. However, the approaches to determining problems, solution techniques and interpretation of results are different. The paper shows different approaches of mathematics and informatics for solving a simple problem from the informatics competition. It was presented for students, who would be future informatics teachers, and it has become the beginning of the discovery of unexpected relationships and rules' chain, the source of successive tasks, and various methods of their solution. The paper brings the results of the constructivist teaching of students in the form of a fictional interview of mathematician and informatician. Fictional cooperation of a mathematician and an informatician in analysing and solving problems will allow for a detailed analysis and comparison of both fields, which will lead to determining both common and different elements.