The Twenty-second Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2020) is held in conjunction with Australasian Computer Science Week. This year ACE is being held at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia, 4-6 February 2020.
Proceeding Downloads
Integrating Research into Information Technology Education
Given the centrality of research and innovation to the information technology (IT) industry, teaching IT students about research is important and can potentially provide students with a range of benefits. This study investigated student perceptions of ...
Paperclips, Circles, and Six-Legged Spiders: An exploration of self-perceived and measured creativity among CS students
This paper presents an exploration of the creative potential of a small group of computer science students, how their scores on divergent production tests relate to their self-perceived creativity in certain domains, and how these both relate to their ...
Detecting Pervasive Source Code Plagiarism through Dynamic Program Behaviours
Source code plagiarism is a persistent problem in undergraduate computer science education. Unfortunately, it is a widespread phenomena with many students plagiarising either because they are unwilling or incapable of completing their own work. Many ...
A Miss is as Good as a Mile: Off-By-One Errors and Arrays in an Introductory Programming Course
Loops and arrays are fundamental CS1 concepts, but ones that can be problematic for novice programmers. In this research, we investigate off-by-one errors -- logic errors where loops perform one too few or one too many iterations -- in code using an ...
Learning Journals in Creative Programming Assessments: Exposing Bugs, Issues, and Misconceptions
This practice paper presents our initial exploration of learning journals as a potential source of information for guiding teaching and learning in creative student-directed programming assessments. Student learning journals were systematically analyzed ...
Syntax Trees and Information Retrieval to Improve Code Similarity Detection
In dealing with source code plagiarism and collusion, automated code similarity detection can be used to filter student submissions and draw attention to pairs of programs that appear unduly similar. The effectiveness of the detection process can be ...
Online Tutoring to Support Programming Exercises
Programming exercises lend themselves to learning environments that can provide automated testing and formative feedback to allow students to learn independently and at their own pace. Even so, there are still situations where there is no substitute for ...
Progression Of Computational Thinking Skills In Swedish Compulsory Schools With Block-based Programming
Although Computational Thinking and Programming have become obligatory in many national curricula, the majority of teachers in practice are currently in dire need of support from both the research and teaching community. A national research and teacher ...
An Exploratory Study of Factors Affecting Attrition within an ICT Degree
While the number of students commencing an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) degree has grown over the last few years, the high attrition rate in ICT degrees is a major concern of both the ICT industry and higher education. This empirical ...
On Assuring Learning About Code Quality
Most of the lifetime cost of a software product is incurred after it is first delivered, i.e. during the maintenance phase. It is generally acknowledged that the quality of the code significantly impacts maintenance costs. This suggests that "code ...
Café: Automatic Correction and Feedback of Programming Challenges for a CS1 Course
This paper introduces Café ("Correction Automatique et Feedback des Étudiants"), an online platform designed to assess and deliver automatic feedback and feedforward information to CS1 students, both on process and products of series of programming ...
Typing Exercises as Interactive Worked Examples for Deliberate Practice in CS Courses
Solving complex Computer Science problems require students to utilize both higher level skills like problem translation, decomposition, and implementation, and lower level skills such as implementing solution patterns and debugging. However, novices ...
Setting Students up to Succeed in Computing Internships
Work integrated learning and professional practice skills are fundamental to computer science education, in addition to forming a requirement for professional body accreditation of courses. The Australian National University (ANU) offers internship ...
On the Evidence for a Learning Hierarchy in Data Structures Exams
Several previous research studies have found a relationship between the ability of novices to trace and explain code, and the ability to write code. Harrington and Cheng refer to that relationship as the Learning Hierarchy. However, almost all of those ...
Industry-Focused Projects in an Intense One-Year ICT Programme
Project-based learning (PJBL) and studio-based learning (SBL) are alternative methods of learning characterised by aspects like collaboration, authenticity of problems, process-focus, student self-management, and continuous reflection. Those teaching ...
Barriers to Securing Industry Internships in Computing
Industry internships offer CS students an opportunity to explore computing disciplines, evaluate self-interests, understand professional expectations, and secure future employment. However, less than 60% of CS students pursue an internship before ...
Live-coding vs Static Code Examples: Which is better with respect to Student Learning and Cognitive Load?
- Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj,
- Pan Gu,
- Eda Zhang,
- Arokia Xavier Annie R,
- Jim Williams,
- Richard Halverson,
- Jignesh M. Patel
Teaching programming using static code examples is the process of displaying pre-written code examples and explaining the purpose of the code. Live-coding is the process of writing code in-class in front of the students and thinking aloud while doing ...
Assessing International Students: The Role of Cognitive Load
Information Technology programs in Australian Universities have an increasing number of low-entry score and Non-Speaking English Background (NESB) students, which encourages educators to implement new strategies for these students to succeed. At a ...
Evaluating an Interactive Tool for Teaching Design Patterns
Design patterns are tried and tested solutions that are used to tackle common object-oriented programming (OOP) problems. However, many computer science students struggle to learn and apply these patterns in large projects. Part of the challenge in ...
Evaluating the Use and Effectiveness of Ungraded Practice Problems in an Introductory Programming Course
Educational researchers have been interested in finding out factors which are pivotal in a students' success within any course. However, less is known about students' engagement with optional course content and its effect on learning outcomes. Optional ...
Understanding Gender Differences to Improve Equity in Computer Programming Education
The increasing wealth of data available from large online programming courses offers exciting opportunities to improve equity in computer science education. In particular, it can provide insight into potential causes of differences between groups, ...
A Review of Research on Parsons Problems
Parsons problems are a type of programming exercise where students rearrange jumbled code blocks of a solution program back into its original form. It is usually implemented as a complement or alternative to traditional programming exercises like code-...
Twenty-Two Years of ACE
This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the first 22 years of the Australasian Computing Education Conference. A similar analysis was carried out after the first ten years; the purpose of this second instance is to explore what has happened since ...
Enhancing CS1 with Mobile Apps
This workshop will introduce an Android library that is designed to fit seamlessly in a traditional CS1 course and to provide an opportunity for instructors to introduce the fundamental computer science concepts in fun and creative ways. During the ...
Index Terms
- Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Australasian Computing Education Conference