Informatics in Education

Introductory programming courses (CS1) are difficult for novices. Inspired by Problem solving followed by instruction and Productive Failure approaches, we define an original “necessity-driven” learning design. Students are put in an apparently well-known situation, but this time they miss an essential ingredient (the target concept) to solve the problem. Then, struggling to solve it, they experience the necessity of that concept. A direct instruction phase follows. Finally, students return to the problem with the necessary knowledge to solve it. In a typical CS1 learning path, we recognise a challenging “rollercoaster of abstraction”. We provide examples of learning sequences designed with our approach to support students when the abstraction changes (both upward and downward) inside the programming language, for example, when a new construct (and the related syntactical, conceptual, and strategic knowledge) is introduced. Also, we discuss the benefits of our design in light of Informatics education literature.

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.

Open Educational Resources have emerged as important elements of education in the contemporary society, promoting life-long and personalized learning that transcends social, economic and geographical barriers. To achieve the potential of OERs and bring impact on education, it is necessary to increase their development and supply. However, one of the current challenges is how to produce quality and relevant OERs to be reused and adapted to different contexts and learning situations. In this paper we proposed an agile method for the development of OERs - AM-OER, grounded on agile practices from Software Engineering. Learning Design practices from the OULDI project (UK Open University) are also embedded into the AM-OER aiming at improving quality and facilitating reuse and adaptation of OERs. In order to validate AM-OER, an experiment was conducted by applying it in the development of an OER on software testing. The results showed preliminary evidences on the applicability, effectiveness and efficiency of the method in the development of OERs.

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.