Education Commons^™

The Stained Glass Of Knowledge: On Understanding Novice Mental Models Of Computing, Briana Christina Bettin

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Learning to program can be a novel experience. The rigidity of programming can be at odds with beginning programmer's existing perceptions, and the concepts can feel entirely unfamiliar. These observations motivated this research, which explores two major questions: What factors influence how novices learn programming? and How can analogy by more appropriately leveraged in programming education?

This dissertation investigates the factors influencing novice programming through multiple methods. The CS1 classroom is observed as a "whole system", with consideration to the factors present in it that can influence the learning process. Learning's cognitive processes are elaborated to ground exploration into specifically …

Using Cognitive Word Games To Promote Lexical Memory Access And Vocabulary Retrieval In Second Language Learners, Kejkaew Thanasuan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Fluency in a second language (L2) is one of the most important skills for the modern world. However, adults learning a new language face many obstacles, including motivation, time, and other challenges in learning. Technology learning tools may help solve these problems. In this dissertation, I tested the effectiveness of cognitive word games as a vocabulary learning method, with the main goal of investigating how different word games including a crossword paradigm task, a free association task and a word-stem completion task were effective at improving vocabulary memory access. The games selectively increased semantic (meaning) or orthographic (spelling) associations in …