Electronic books (ebooks) are becoming commonplace and widespread. Highly interactive ebooks actively engage the reader and have great potential to increase student learning. With the recent release of Apple's iBooks Author application, instructors can develop highly interactive ebooks. This paper reports on our experience of creating an interactive Prolog programming ebook using iBooks Author. A particular focus is placed on ebook features pertinent to undergraduate computer science instruction including code listings, coding tutorials, and integration with course management systems and automated grading systems. This work is supported, in part, by two NSF grants.
Many schools have introduced, or are considering, a programming course targeting mobile devices to satisfy student interest in programming smart phones. In addition, a new class of mobile devices are appearing that combine the functionality of an eBook reader with a web browser, and many of them are based on the same programming frameworks as the smart phones. We report on the successes of mobile device programming courses at two schools. In addition, we report on the accomplishments of students developing software to leverage these newer, multi-function devices in supporting broader computer science education initiatives. In particular, we have developed a service-oriented application that allows students to compile and test programs written in Java and C++ that can be invoked from these devices. We have developed other software allowing these devices to function like Tablet PCs. After describing these important tools, we discuss our current efforts to use these mobile devices in computer science education.
This paper reports on the progress of an NSF funded research project investigating the development practices of students in introductory programming courses. In previous work, we describe our extension of the BlueJ IDE to capture events associated with program development [5]. Here we report on data collected during the Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 semesters on CS 1 students. In particular, we show that our data analysis independently confirms the results obtained in separate studies by Jadud [3,2]. In addition we use our empirical evidence to discern some higher level "patterns" of beginning student programming behaviors including potential cheating and the impact on success of students starting projects late.
This paper reports on the progress of an NSF funded research project investigating the development practices of students in introductory programming courses. In previous work, we describe our extension of the BlueJ IDE to capture events associated with program development. Here we report on data collected during the Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 semesters on CS 1 students. In particular, we show that our data analysis independently confirms the results obtained in separate studies by Jadud [3, 2]. In addition we use our empirical evidence to discern some higher level "patterns" of beginning student programming behaviors including potential cheating and the impact on success of students starting projects late.
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