Lassi Haaranen

• Aalto University

When students in programming courses are taught event-driven programming (EDP) for the first time, they face new terminology and concepts that they should internalize. Moreover, they learn a fully new approach for reasoning about program logic and execution order. However, there is a lack of research in students’ understanding of these concepts. In...

In learning programming and learning to construct applications with graphical user interfaces, there exists a large body of concepts from everyday life that are used to guide students. In this study, we explore whether such concepts from everyday life that we might believe require no explanation are actually understood in different ways by students...

We asked students to explain the structure and execution of their small programs after they had submitted them to a programming exercise. These questions about learner's code (QLCs) were delivered at three occasions in an online and open course in introductory programming as a part of the digital learning material. We make inductive content analysi...

We asked students to explain the structure and execution of their small programs after they had submitted them to a programming exercise. These questions about learner's code (QLCs) were delivered at three occasions in an online and open course in introductory programming as a part of the digital learning material. We make inductive content analysi...

Software visualization has numerous educational applications that focus on illustrating code, structure, behavior, and/or evolution of software. However, there are few available solutions that (1) illustrate arbitrary high-level concepts according to the scripts specified by the instructor and (2) can be easily integrated into various existing lear...

This paper demonstrates three new content packages recently published for Acos, the server for sharing smart learning content. The packages are aimed at 1) code annotation, 2) automatically assessed tracing exercises, and 3) scripted stepwise animations for stepping through explanations of various content. The content can be disseminated to differe...

[MANUSCRIPT: https://research.aalto.fi/en/persons/aleksi-lukkarinen] — During the past two decades, event-driven programming (EDP) has emerged as a central and almost ubiquitous concept in modern software development: Graphical user interfaces are self-evident in most mobile and web-based applications, as well as in many embedded systems, and they...

An increasing number of countries have recently included programming education in their curricula. Similarly, utilizing programming concepts in gameplay has become popular in the videogame industry. Although many games have been developed for learning to program, their variety and their correspondence to national curricula remain an uncharted terri...

The culture of playing video games has evolved rapidly in the past decade. Presently, there are many different types of online communities that have games or a particular game as their focus. Some games, in particular, can be used as a platform for introducing and discussing computer science concepts. We wanted to investigate how these online gamin...

This article discusses an emerging phenomenon of streaming programming to a live audience who in turn can interact with the streamer. In essence, this means broadcasting the programming environment and typically a web camera feed of the streamer to viewers. Streaming programming bears many similarities with live-streaming playing of video games, wh...

Modern online learning management systems (LMSs) support a variety of online learning activities, such as animations, exercises, and other interactive learning materials. However, there are many technical challenges in using the same activities in multiple LMSs because content is typically tightly coupled with one protocol to communicate with the L...

Playing games is a popular pastime and a form of entertainment. However, informal learning of CS concepts takes place in many game contexts and often times it happens unintentionally. An instance of engaging informal learning are games where people have created simulated computers using game elements and mechanics. Creating these artefacts requires...

Modern learning environments support a variety of smart learning content, such as animations, exercises or other interactive learning material. These can be incorporated into different online platforms. However, there are many technical challenges in using the same smart learning content in multiple learning management systems. We describe the main...

The ability to use version control systems is a highly desired skill in the software industry and the need to teach it has been recognized in the literature. Git, and other version control systems, have previously been used by instructors in classrooms to distribute exercises, to facilitate assessment, and as a platform for project collaboration an...

A small number of recent studies have suggested that learning is enhanced when the illustrations in instructional materials are designed to appeal to the learners' emotions through the use of color and the personification of key elements. We sought to replicate this emotional design effect in the context of introductory object-oriented programming...

Abstract—There are multiple commercial and non-commercial products available to integrate gamification aspects to existing services. Some of these are platform dependent whilst others are more general purpose. Commercial systems come with some problems – for example, lack of control and privacy issues. To avoid these problems, we created two iterat...

Achievement badges are increasingly used to enhance educational systems and they have been shown to affect student behavior in different ways. However, details on best practices and effective concepts to implement badges from a non-technical point of view are scarce. We implemented badges to our learning management system, used them on a large cour...