Education Commons^™

Improving Introductory Computer Science Education With Draco, Mike Dongyub Ryu

Master's Theses

Today, many introductory computer science courses rely heavily on a specific programming language to convey fundamental programming concepts. For beginning students, the cognitive capacity required to operate with the syntactic forms of this language may overwhelm their ability to formulate a solution to a program.

We recognize that the introductory computer science courses can be more effective if they convey fundamental concepts without requiring the students to focus on the syntax of a programming language. To achieve this, we propose a new teaching method based on the Design Recipe and Code Outlining (DRaCO) processes. Our new pedagogy capitalizes on the …

Automation In Cs1 With The Factoring Problem Generator, Joshua B. Parker

Master's Theses

As the field of computer science continues to grow, the number of students enrolled in related programs will grow as well. Though one-on-one tutoring is one of the more effective means of teaching, computer science instructors will have less and less time to devote to individual students. To address this growing concern, many tools that automate parts of an instructor’s job have been proposed. These tools can assist instructors in presenting concepts and grading student work, and they can help students learn to program more effectively. A growing group of intelligent tutoring systems attempts to tie all of this functionality …