Visualization of VHDL-based simulations as a pedagogical tool for supporting computer science education

Understanding the development of professional identity in Computer Science (CS) undergraduate students can help better evaluate CS degree program's effectiveness in preparing students for their career goals. This poster presents findings from a study where we surveyed 105 CS undergraduate students about their self-perceptions of technical competencies in their chosen CS professions, the mechanisms to develop their competencies, as well as their motivations behind attaining these skill sets. Preliminary analysis of this data indicates that most CS students (93.3%), identified themselves into 7 different computing professions including Software Engineering (81.0%), Web Development (37.1%), User Experience (19.0%), and Computer Security (12.4%). They indicated using multiple mechanisms to develop their technical competencies including coursework, internship/professional experience, and research. Motivations behind their learning included self-interest as well as industry demands. We analyzed the relationships between students' skill proficiencies, motivations, and mechanisms for learning and found differences between novice, intermediate, and advanced learners. We found that students who self-assessed their proficiencies as novices in their chosen professional identity had a single mechanism for learning, most commonly coursework preparation. On the other hand, students who rated themselves as intermediate or advanced learners had multiple mechanisms and motivational factors behind attaining their skill set. These findings are important for better understanding students' learning needs and career aspirations. CS departments can use this information for better aligning their degree programs to student goals and creating pathways that ensure the development of CS students professional identity.

Teaching and learning operating system (OS) design is a core part of computer science education, which is highly demanding for both teaching and learning. This paper presents a tool-centric framework that aims at enhancing teaching operating system design for undergraduate students in computer science. The framework integrates multiple educational tools and methodologies with the aim of making the course more appealing for students while improving their comprehension and hands-on experience in OS design. The proposed framework extends existing educational theories and practices by focusing on aspects such as computational thinking, collaborative learning, and gamification in the learning process. The theoretical basics of this framework, the practical use of such a framework, and the expected influence on students’ learning outcome will be further explained in this paper. Empirical evidence, detailed examples and comparisons with existing frameworks underscore its potential impact on student learning outcomes.

Undergraduate computer science students can have difficulty understanding quicksort and other divide-and-conquer sorting algorithms. It is important to understand how students think about quicksort in order to find out how to better teach the students, and also for those students to be able to write and analyze these algorithms for their own use. Data was collected from two interviews, each about an hour long, with undergraduate computer science students. The data was then qualitatively analyzed in order to draw conclusions on how the students approached the coding of the quicksort algorithm. Both interview participants were able to quickly and efficiently write quicksort using linked lists. However, both students struggled when asked to rewrite their algorithms using static arrays. From the transcripts and hand-written notes taken from the two interviews, it seems plausible that their issues stem from challenges with their treatment of the pivot in the array implementation. Additionally, the array implementation may have caused the participants to change the visualization of the algorithm to which they had grown accustomed, further accentuating their difficulties. While both students showed obvious proficiency with the linked-list algorithm, they failed to realize key intuitions when attempting to make their algorithms space-efficient by using a single array. Future work may include analysis of other divide-and-conquer algorithms, as well as a closer look into how visualizations of sorting algorithms affect student understanding.

Most studies of gender and computer science have been conducted (out of necessity) in gender-imbalanced environments. The findings often point to significant gender differences, leading the researchers to recommend strategies to meet these differences. One such recommendation is to adopt a female-friendly, contextual approach to curriculum development.1 In contrast, based on our recent and ongoing studies of undergraduate computer science (CS) students at Carnegie Mellon University, we hypothesize that in a more balanced environment, gender differences tend to dissolve. That is, the spectrum of interests, motivation, and personality types of men and of women becomes more alike than different. This leads us to be considerably more pragmatic in our recommendations for effective and positive change. Indeed, we believe that recommendations for curricular changes based on presumed gender differences can be misguided and may help reinforce, even perpetuate, stereotypes. Here, we describe some of the changes in the culture of computing as our undergraduate CS environment has become more balanced in three critical domains: gender, the mix of students and breadth of their interests, and the professional experiences afforded all students. Brief Background for the Evolving Culture In 1995, just 7percent (7 out of 96) of the entering freshmen CS majors at Carnegie Mellon were women. Since 1999, the percentage has increased nearly fivefold (on average, 45 out of 132), challenging trends across the country.2 Two major factors have contributed to the dramatic increase of women in CS at Carnegie Mellon: an outreach program for high school CS teachers that combined technical training with discussions of gender-gap issues and a broadened admissions policy (emphasizing diverse interests—along with high [End Page 110] achievement in mathematics and science—and de-emphasizing prior programming experience). To meet the needs of students with varying backgrounds, multiple entry routes were built into the first-year programming sequence.3 The subsequent creation of the proactive student organization Women@SCS has been catalytic in building an environment in which the new student body can flourish.4 Women@SCS explicitly provides crucial educational and professional experiences generally taken for granted by the majority in the community but typically unavailable for the minority participants.5 Many of these experiences are casual and often happen in social settings. For example, in an undergraduate CS program, male students often have the opportunity to discuss homework with roommates, with friends late at night, or over meals. Course and job information and recommendations are passed down from upperclassmen, from fraternity files, or from friends. Women students, being in the minority, do not have access to—in fact are often excluded from—these implicit and important advantages. As one proceeds into the professional world, similar phenomena occur. These key actions, and implications for other venues, are discussed further at the end of this paper. Our recent study, based on a set of interviews with seniors in the class of 2002, may be viewed to a limited degree as a follow-up to the intensive longitudinal studies of CS students at Carnegie Mellon carried out by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher between 1995 and 1999.6 Their studies, funded by the Sloan Foundation and discussed in Unlocking the Clubhouse, were undertaken to help understand differences in male and female students' engagement (attachment, persistence, and detachment) with computer science, with a special focus on the gender imbalance in the field.7 A major goal was to devise and effect changes in recruitment, curriculum, pedagogy, and culture to encourage the broadest possible participation in the computing enterprise. Unlocking the Clubhouse paints a bleak picture for women in the undergraduate computer science program in the 1990s, one that still resonates with many CS programs across the nation. Margolis and Fisher note that for the most part, "women who were enthusiastic about computing find their confidence and interest extinguished in the college years."8 Consequently, many of the (few) women students who entered the...

Digital technology is reshaping the landscape of higher education, especially in the field of computer science. As digital platforms become central to the learning process, understanding student engagement in these continuously evolving environments is increasingly vital. This study explores the current state of online learning among undergraduate computer science students, investigates factors influencing their engagement, and proposes strategies to enhance online education. The research framework is grounded in the TPACK model, behaviorist learning theory, learning engagement theory, and situated cognition learning theory, encompassing student characteristics, multidimensional online learning engagement, and key influencing factors. Data on participants’ basic attributes, levels of engagement, and the major determinants of these engagement levels were collected via a questionnaire survey. Analyses using SPSS 25.0—employing t-tests, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation—revealed significant trends and relationships. Findings show a notable positive correlation between the duration of online learning and overall engagement, whereas gender, home location, and academic major exerted relatively limited influence. Subjective intention, attitude, and motivation emerged as crucial determinants, and interactions with instructors and Peers—reinforced by teaching approaches and feedback—played an essential role in fostering emotional involvement. Building on these insights, the study recommends initiatives to strengthen self-motivation, nurture meaningful online interactions, enhance technical support systems, and reinforce mechanisms for assessing learning outcomes. This work provides empirical evidence for a deeper understanding of online education while indicating directions for ongoing improvement.

Coding is increasingly popular in schools around the world and is often taught by non-specialist teachers as an integrated task with other subject areas. In this article, we explore the relationship between computer science (CS) concepts and students’ multimodal expression in a coding animated narrative (CAN) task in the context of an integrated English-Technology unit of learning. Through this collective case study, we explore how CS concepts underpin semiotic elements of an animated narrative, analyse the factors that influence the extent to which students exercise those concepts, and reveal the tensions and opportunities that a CAN task may present for learning computer science concepts in regular, non-specialist, cross-curricular classrooms. The findings suggest that CAN tasks are unique in presenting opportunities for students to learn challenging CS concepts such as synchronisation and parallelism. At the same time, CAN tasks present tensions for teaching CS concepts in non-specialist classrooms, where student projects are often judged on their visual qualities. In such settings, procedural, rather than conceptual knowledge, may be a more efficient route to creative outcomes. It also means that drawing skills need to be prioritised. Role specialisation often led to better quality projects but at the expense of individual students’ conceptual development in computer science.

To attract and encourage the best and the brightest students to pursue state, federal and tribal government careers in cybersecurity, the National Science Foundation's CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program was created and funded in 2000 as part of the Federal Cyber Services training and education initiative. Only institutions with a strong and established academic program in cybersecurity are eligible to participate in the CyberCorps SFS program. For the past four years, Towson University (TU) has offered CyberCorps scholarships to highly-qualified undergraduate students in computer science with a track in computer security. The poster describes the TU cybersecurity curriculum and the extracurricular activities that have been essential in bringing the CyberCorps SFS program to TU and recruiting qualified undergraduate students, as well as, challenges and lessons learned.

Data have become a highly valued asset for governments, industries and individuals, and the management of these data collections remains a critical technical challenge.. The challenges of managing terabytes and exabytes of data and expanding data management to include other data modalities while maintaining the fundamental tenets of database management (data independence, data integrity, data consistency, etc) are important issues for any organization today. Published as five volumes with over 4000 pages, the Encyclopedia of Database Systems provides easy access to important concepts relevant information on all aspects of very large databases, data management, and database systems, including areas of current interest and research results of historical significance.. This comprehensive reference contains 1,300 illustrated entries, organized alphabetically. Each entry presents basic terminology, concepts, methods and algorithms, key results to date, references to the literature, and cross-references to other entries. Topics for the Encyclopedia — including areas of current interest as well as research results of historical significance — were selected by a distinguished international advisory board and written by world class experts in the field. Encyclopedia of Database Systems is designed to meet the needs of researchers, professors, graduate and undergraduate students in computer science and engineering. Industry professionals such as database specialists and software developers will also benefit from this reference work. [from publisher's website]

11752127 2109SPi-5 4 3 2 1 0 To our families PrefaceWe are in an information era where generating and storing large amounts of data are commonplace.A growing number of organizations routinely handle terabytes and exabytes of data, and individual digital data collections easily reach multiple gigabytes.Along with the increases in volume, the modality of digitized data that requires efficient management and the access modes to these data have become more varied.It is increasingly common for business and personal data collections to include images, video, voice, and unstructured text; the retrieval of these data comprises various forms, including structured queries, keyword search, and visual access.Data have become a highly valued asset for governments, industries and individuals, and the management of these data collections remains a critical technical challenge.Database technology has matured over the past four decades and is now quite ubiquitous in many applications that deal with more traditional business data.The challenges of expanding data management to include other data modalities while maintaining the fundamental tenets of database management (data independence, data integrity, data consistency, etc.) are issues that the community continues to work on.The lines between database management and other fields such as information retrieval, multimedia retrieval, and data visualization are increasingly blurred.This multi-volume Encyclopedia of Database Systems provides easy access to important concepts on all aspects of database systems, including areas of current interest and research results of historical significance.It is a comprehensive collection of over 1,250 in-depth entries (3,067 including synonyms) that present coverage of the important concepts, issues, emerging technology and future trends in the field of database technologies, systems, and applications.The content of the Encyclopedia was determined through wide consultations.We were assisted by an Advisory Board in coming up with the overall structure and content.Each of these areas were put under the control of Area Editors (70 in total) who further developed the content for each area, soliciting experts in the field as contributors to write the entries, and performed the necessary technical editing.Some of them even wrote entries themselves.Nearly 1,000 authors were involved in writing entries.The intended audience for the Encyclopedia is technically broad and diverse.It includes anyone concerned with database system technology and its applications.Specifically, the Encyclopedia can serve as a valuable and authoritative reference for students, researchers and practitioners who need a quick and authoritative reference to the subject of databases, data management, and database systems.We anticipate that many people will benefit from this reference work, including database specialists, software developers, scientists and engineers who need to deal with (structured, semi-structured or unstructured) large datasets.In addition, database and data mining researchers and scholars in the many areas that apply database technologies, such as artificial intelligence, software engineering, robotics and computer vision, machine learning, finance and marketing are expected to benefit from the Encyclopedia.We would like to thank the members of the Advisory Board, the Editorial Board, and the individual contributors for their help in creating this Encyclopedia.The success of the Encyclopedia could not have been achieved without the expertise and the effort of the many contributors.Our sincere thanks also go to Springer's editors and staff, including Jennifer Carlson, Susan Lagerstrom-Fife, Oona Schmid, and Susan Bednarczyk for their support throughout the project.Finally, we would very much like to hear from readers for any suggestions regarding the Encyclopedia's content.With a project of this size and scope, it is quite possible that we may have missed some concepts.It is also possible that some entries may benefit from revisions and clarifications.We are committed to issuing periodic updates and we look forward to the feedback from the community to improve the Encyclopedia.

The effects of dynamic and static visualizations in understanding a topic in an undergraduate course were reported. An experimental study with two groups of students totaling 38, investigated the effect of using static graphics and text over dynamic visuals with the same amount of text. For the study, two versions of a computer-based learning on a computer science subject, for the topic of memory management in operating systems were developed and served as a learning material. To test on the effectiveness, students were given a test on recall and transfer of knowledge after studying the learning material. Initial analysis of results indicates no statistical difference between the scores for the two versions and suggests that dynamic visuals, by themselves, do not necessarily improve student understanding.

Undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students are graduating with insufficient communication skills, thereby diminishing their employability and upward socio-economic mobility. The purpose of this action research study was to explore ways of improving the alignment between academic outcomes and employer needs related to communication skills for undergraduate STEM students at a large, private university in the northeastern United States. Participants for Cycle 1 of this study included academic advisors and career services/cooperative education (CS/CE) staff members experienced in assisting undergraduate computer science and information technology (CSIT) students at the research site. Based on Cycle 1 findings and a review of the extant literature, an action step was designed, implemented, and evaluated in Cycle 2 to explore potential changes to a required first-year experience (RFE). A Recommendations Working Group (RWG) comprising students, alumni, staff, and faculty convened to achieve these outcomes. Evaluation of the study's results was based on RWG members' feedback on the efficacy of the group's constitution, facilitation, and process as well as College101 administration assessments of the RWG's co-created recommendations. The study concluded that peer modeling and interaction are valuable for strengthening undergraduate student communication skills, high-quality facilitation and instruction are critical for effective cultivation of undergraduate communication skills, and holistic institutional commitment to developing undergraduate student communication skills may improve outcomes. Implications for higher education institutions include that undergraduate STEM student communication skills development can be supported by leveraging peer modeling and interaction; attending to the qualifications, training, and support of associated facilitators and instructors; and ensuring that existing programming and units charged with cultivating these skills are aligned and sufficiently supported.--Author's abstract

This paper describes a lab project in computer communications and networks for senior undergraduate students in computer science and engineering. Given detailed specifications, students are asked to implement a data link layer (DLL) that integrates correctly with other provided layers to obtain a complete working network stack. This lab gives the students the opportunity to learn how to read formal specifications for a network project and write a complete piece of source code. It provides a comprehensive environment for students to write software for a network protocol, test and debug it, and observe its working behavior. In this paper, the authors present a technical description of the project and a discussion of related educational issues.

As one mainstream of current software development, Object-oriented programming has become one key course for undergraduate students in Computer Science. Since Object-oriented concepts are difficult to understand for students, small programming exercises are used to train and help the students, and the study performance is evaluated based on the quality of the submitted source code. The common practice of code assess-ment in programming courses is checking whether the submitted projects pass carefully-designed test cases. However, even some projects pass all test cases, they may have bad software design and do not use the knowledge of Object-oriented programming well, especially in the early stage of courses. Therefore, we propose an anomaly detection approach for early warning in Object-oriented programming courses, which can automatically find the abnormal application of Object-oriented knowledge. In our approach, we conduct static analysis on the code submitted by students. Typical Objected-oriented metrics are extracted, and students are divided into two groups by K-means clustering: being good at Object-objected knowledge or not, and finally detect anomalous students based on the distance from cluster centers. We evaluate our approach on the realistic data sets collected from our Object-oriented programming course, and experimental results show the effectiveness of our method.

Though software testing courses are commonly taught as part of software engineering curricula, software testing is still a challenging issue in software engineering education. Students frequently see testing only as something that happens at the end of the development process. Two challenges can be recognized: "how to make the students recognize the relevance of the testing activity?" and "how to motivate the students on using testing ideas in their projects?". In an attempt to explore the impact of introducing testing practices throughout development, during the past Fall semester we modified the project requirements in a course on object-oriented analysis and design offered to the undergraduate students in computer science at Georgia Institute of Technology. Our idea was to require the students to start thinking about testing as early as possible, by including testing-related practices in all phases of the development process. This paper presents the details of the testing approach used in the course and discusses the results we obtained, in terms of the students' attitudes and learning.

The purpose of this research is to develop problem-based learning and concept mapping by using a block-based programming model (PBL-CBp model) and to evaluate the appropriateness of the PBL-CBp model. The research will be divided into two parts. The first part will be about learning style development and will study the theories and ideas which relate to problem-based learning, the programming process and the concept mapping and block-based programming. It will synthesise the steps in the problem-based learning method, and the steps in the program process and design the learning steps by using problem-based concept mapping and block-based programming. The second part will consist of an evaluation of the appropriateness of the model. An appropriateness questionnaire for the PBL-CBp model will be created and the PBL-CBp model will be submitted to five experts for improvement.