As the societal demands for application and knowledge in computer science (CS) increase, CS student enrollment keeps growing rapidly around the world. By continuously improving the efficacy of computing education and providing guidelines for learning and teaching practice, computing education research plays a vital role in addressing both educational and societal challenges that emerge from the growth of CS students. Given the significant role of computing education research, it is important to ensure the reliability of studies in this field. The extent to which studies can be replicated in a field is one of the most important standards for reliability. Different fields have paid increasing attention to the replication rates of their studies, but the replication rate of computing education was never systematically studied. To fill this gap, this study investigated the replication rate of computing education between 2009 and 2018. We examined 2,269 published studies from three major conferences and two major journals in computing education, and found that the overall replication rate of computing education was 2.38%. This study demonstrated the need for more replication studies in computing education and discussed how to encourage replication studies through research initiatives and policy making.
Online question & answer (Q & A) is a distinctive type of online interaction that is impactful on student learning. Prior studies on online interaction in large-scale classes mainly focused on online discussion and were conducted mainly in non-STEM fields. This research aims to quantify the effects of online Q & A interactions on student performance in the context of STEM education. 218 computer science students from a large university in the southeastern United States participated in this research. Data of four online Q & A activities was mined from the online Q & A forum for the course, including three student activities (asking questions, answering questions and viewing questions/answers) and one instructor activity (answering questions/providing clarifications). These activities were found to have different effects on student performance. Viewing questions/answers was found to have the greatest effect, while interaction with instructors showed minimum effects. This research fills the gap of lacking research in online Q & A, and the results of this research can inform the effective usage of online Q & A in large-scale STEM courses.
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