Dennis J. Bouvier

• PhD
• Chair at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

In recent years, computing education researchers have investigated the impact of problem context on students’ learning and programming performance. This work continues the investigation motivated, in part, by cognitive load theory and educational research in computer science and other disciplines. The results of this study could help inform computi...

Every year, millions of students learn how to write programs. Learning activities for beginners almost always include programming tasks that require a student to write a program to solve a particular problem. When learning how to solve such a task, many students need feedback on their previous actions, and hints on how to proceed. For tasks such as...

Every year, millions of students learn how to write programs. Learning activities for beginners almost always include programming tasks that require a student to write a program to solve a particular problem. When learning how to solve such a task, many students need feedback on their previous actions, and hints on how to proceed. In the case of pr...

Peer Instruction (PI) as defined by Mazur, and variations on this pedagogic technique, have been in use in computing courses for about a decade. Despite dozens of educational research publications documenting positive learning effects, improved retention, student acceptance, and effectiveness for large classes; PI does not appear to be widely adopt...

Diagnostic messages generated by compilers and interpreters such as syntax error messages have been researched for decades. Unfortunately these messages which include error, warning, and runtime messages, present substantial difficulty and could be more effective, particularly for novices. Recent years have seen increased number of papers in the ar...

The experience of transitioning into and starting higher education is a very individual one, with some applicants viewing the prospect of higher education as an unknown entity; for those who are first in their family or community to consider higher education, this can seem an "alien environment". These are just some of the issues that lead to appli...

The experience of transitioning into and starting higher education is very much an individual one, with some applicants viewing the prospect of higher education as an unknown entity. For those who are first in their family or community to consider higher education, it can seem to be an "alien environment". This is just one of the issues that lead t...

Contextualization of problems is widely studied in mathematics education. In computer science it is taken for granted that authentic, contextualized programming assignments will increase student interest and therefore enhance performance in programming assignments. This paper examines whether contextualization is, in fact, beneficial for students....

It is often debated whether a problem presented in a straightforward minimalist fashion is better, or worse, for learning than the same problem presented with a "real-life" or "concrete" context. The presentation, contextualization, or "problem description" has been well studied over several decades in disciplines such as mathematics education and...

This reports a pilot study of the willingness and ability of elders with memory diseases to follow directions from a virtual coach. This pilot study included older adult participants with dementia residing in a skilled nursing facility. The participants viewed the virtual coach through, and themselves in, a two-way mirror while the virtual coach le...

Peer Instruction (PI) is a student-centric pedagogy in which students move from the role of passive listeners to active participants in the classroom. Over the past five years, there have been a number of research articles regarding the value of PI in computer science. The present work adds to this body of knowledge by examining outcomes from seven...

Peer Instruction (PI) is a student-centric pedagogy in which students move from the role of passive listeners to active participants in the classroom. Over the past five years, there have been a number of research articles regarding the value of PI in computer science. The present work adds to this body of knowledge by examining outcomes from seven...

Peer Instruction (PI) is a student-centric pedagogy in which students move from the role of passive listeners to active participants in the classroom. Over the past five years, there have been a number of research articles regarding the value of PI in computer science. The present work adds to this body of knowledge by examining outcomes from seven...

This paper describes the results of an ITiCSE working group convened in 2013 to review and revisit the influential ITiCSE 2001 McCracken working group that reported [18] on novice programmers' ability to solve a specified programming problem. Like that study, the one described here asked students to implement a simple program. Unlike the original s...

This study examines the extent to which novice computing students with minimal computer science coursework and no training in user interface (UI) evaluation consider UI concepts such as usability, user experience, and the context in which software will be used when evaluating an interface. In analyzing the responses of 149 novice computer science s...

Academics expend a large amount of time and effort to sustain and enhance the motivation of undergraduate students. Typically based on a desire to ensure that all students achieve their full potential, approaches are based on an understanding that students who are highly motivated will learn more. Furthermore, institutional rewards accrue from effe...

Data collected using laser scanners on construction sites often include regions in 3D space that cannot be observed beyond occlusions, which are objects in the line of sight of the scanner. These occlusions may exist even if scans are planned using a scan-planning algorithm. The issue of occlusion can prevent accurate modeling of objects in a scan,...

Academics expend a large amount of time and effort to sustain and enhance the motivation of undergraduate students. Typically based on a desire to ensure that all students achieve their full potential, approaches are based on an understanding that students who are highly motivated will learn more. Furthermore, institutional rewards accrue from effe...

Since logical statements naturally occur in programming and other computing work, educators may hope that all beginning computing students can employ basic logical thinking even if they are not familiar with the formalized mathematical notation. However, Herman and others found that even after being taught logic, students can still fail to correctl...

Innate understanding of concurrency helps beginners solve CS problems with multiple processes executing at the same time.

In New Zealand and Australia, the BRACElet project has been investigating students' acquisition of programming skills in introductory programming courses. The project has explored students' skills in basic syntax, tracing code, understanding code, and writing code, seeking to establish the relationships between these skills. This ITiCSE working gro...

We asked students to answer a question about the probability of a sequence of events - a soccer team winning at least seven games in an eight-game season, given that the probability of winning each game is one half. While relatively few of the answers were totally correct, nearly all showed understanding of some of the aspects of combining event pr...

This paper investigates what students understand about algorithm efficiency before receiving any formal instruction on the topic. We gave students a challenging search problem and two solutions, then asked them to identify the more efficient solution and to justify their choice. Many students did not use the standard worst-case analysis of algorith...

Staining is a technique for categorizing time-varying spatial data; that is, data of things moving through space over time. In Staining, a stain is applied in either time or space, and the objects which move through the stain become marked. This technique and a research prototype demonstrating the technique were developed in response to the VAST 20...

We report on responses to a series of four questions designed to identify pre-existing abilities related to debugging and troubleshooting experiences of novice students before they begin programming instruction. The focus of these questions include general troubleshooting, bug location, exploring unfamiliar environments, and describing students' re...

As the third in a series of projects investigating common-sense computing – the relevant knowledge that students have before any formal study of computing – we examine stu-dents' commonsense understanding of concurrency. Specif-ically, we replicated (with modifications) an experiment by Ben-David Kolikant. [2] Ben-David Kolikant's data were gathere...

This paper presents a case study of the use of a repeated single-criterion card sort with an unusually large, diverse participant group. The study, whose goal was to elicit novice programmers' knowledge of programming concepts, involved over 20 researchers from four continents and 276 participants drawn from 20 different institutions. In this paper...

This paper reports a multi-national, multi-institutional study to investigate Computer Science students' understanding of software design and software design criteria. Student participants were recruited from two groups: students early in their degree studies and stu- dents completing their Bachelor degrees. Computer Science educators were also rec...

A methodology for Web-based application development is presented. The methodology serves as a road map to guide student project development. Project development proceeds in three phases: structural design, detailed design, and implementation. Structural ...

Previous Computer Science Education research incorporating Common Learning Experiences (CLEs) into freshman level breadth-first Computer Science course inspired the author to undertake similar work for a depth-first course. This paper presents a set of CLEs developed for this purpose, namely the 'Living Flowcharts CLEs', along with a discussion of...

Previous Computer Science Education research incorporating Common Learning Experiences (CLEs) into freshman level breadth-first Computer Science course inspired the author to undertake similar work for a depth-first course. This paper presents a set of CLEs developed for this purpose, namely the 'Living Flowcharts CLEs', along with a discussion of...

An abstract is not available.

The Computing Curricula 2001 for Computer Science (CC2001-CS) identifies two core units for the Graphics and Visual Computing (GV) knowledge area. The suggested minimum of coverage time of three instructional hours for these two core units hardly warrants a computer graphics course. This paper offers suggestions for incorporating the core GV units...

Previous Computer Science Education research incorporating Common Learning Experiences (CLEs) into freshman level breadth-first Computer Science course inspired the author to undertake similar work for a depth-first course. This paper presents a set of CLEs developed for this purpose, namely the 'Living Flowcharts CLEs', along with a discussion of...

The field of computer graphics is expanding and evolving rapidly. Past computer graphics courses addressed low-level topics such as line drawing algorithms (Computers and Graphics 2000;24(1):151–155) while the graphics industry has moved toward scene graph representations of three-dimensional scenes. This discrepancy has moved some educators to sug...

A number of published papers recommend teaching scene graphs in the introductory computer graphics course [Bouvier 2002; Cunningham 1999; Hitchner and Sowizral 1999; Wolfe 1999]. However, little has been published concerning how to effectively use scene graphs in the introductory computer graphics course. This paper summarizes possible scene graphs...

In the brief history of the World Wide Web (WWW), much has changed. Millions of web pages have been published in a relatively short time. Next to the Web content, the one of the most dynamic aspects of the WWW is the development of HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This paper explores the various versions of HTML and gives a status report on HTML s...

In the brief history of the World Wide Web (WWW), much has changed. Millions of web pages have been published in a very short time. Next to the Web content, the most dynamic aspect of the WWW is the development of HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This paper explores the various version of HTML and gives a status report on HTML standards developmen...