High academic failure rates in computer programming are significant transitioning from initial to advanced stages. In online higher education, challenges are greater since students' autonomy requires greater skills for self-regulation and co-regulation of learning. The SimProgramming approach develops these skills and is being adapted to e-learning for this transitioning phase. In this paper, we describe the dynamics and outcomes of student participation and task development in a first iteration of the adapted e-SimProgramming approach, which took place during a 2nd year-2nd semester course for the Informatics Engineering program at Universidade Aberta in the 2018/2019 academic year. We identified pedagogical and technical challenges, requiring changes for subsequent attempts of adopting SimProgramming for online education contexts: target audience and teaching context aspects; self and co-regulation of learning dimensions of e-learning courses; pedagogical design recommendations; and requirements for software tools for learning management.
Learning software programming is challenging for software engineering students. In this paper, students' engagement in learning software engineering programming is considered under the SimProgramming approach using the OC2-RD2 narrative technique to create an immersive learning context. The objectives of this paper are twofold: presenting a narrative-driven immersive learning approach to introduce software engineering concepts and coding techniques to online undergraduate students; and analyzing the students' feedback on this approach. Thematic analysis of the metacognitive tasks was performed on the students' fortnightly reflections about their learning progress. Content analysis was based on interest categories, students' perceptions, metacognitive challenges, narratives, examples and aspects to be kept or to be improved. Data from the content analysis were organized into categories, subcategories, indicators, and recording units and their categorization was peer-reviewed. The narratives were considered by the students as interesting, appealing, akin to professional reality and promoting interaction. Most students thought the approach was helpful for learning software programming.
Research data on the activities of student teams in online learning environments are relevant for evaluating instructional methods, strategies, tools, and materials. For research data sharing and publication purposes, these personal data must be anonymized or pseudonymized as recommended by data protection and privacy policies. This paper addresses issues related to anonymizing and pseudonymizing student data on the Slack teamwork platform, one often employed in educational and business settings. Issues are discussed from two perspectives: data extraction and data transformation. Difficulties and challenges concerning data extraction and transformation are described. The complexities of these two processes are considered, and a starting point for developing more efficient methods is put forward.
Software engineering education requires students to develop technical knowledge and advanced cognitive and behavioral skills, particularly in the transition from novice to proficient. In distance learning, the hurdles are greater because students require greater autonomy, adopting strategies of self and co-regulation of learning. Facing these challenges, the SimProgramming approach has been transposed into the context of DL: e-SimProgramming. In the second iteration of e-SimProgramming implementation (2019/2020), one adaptation was inclusion of metacognitive challenges (MC) to promote students' self-reflection on their learning process. We explain the design of the two types of implemented MCs. We provide qualitative and quantitative analysis of: 1) evolution of MCs submission throughout the semester, identifying regularity and completion within deadlines and their relationship to student success; 2) students' perceptions of MCs. Results show a positive correlation between high MC submission and student success, greater interest and involvement of students in type 2 MCs and positive perceptions of students about MCs.
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