Pakiso Khomokhoana

• Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
• Lecturer at University of the Free State

Computer programming continues to be challenging despite numerous strategies and skills that researchers and instructors have shared over four decades. Using explicit instruction (EI) to help students learn and better understand computer programming presents a promising avenue for tackling this challenge. This paper describes a study that implement...

Background Risk difference is a valuable measure of association in epidemiology and healthcare which has the potential to be used in medical and clinical variable selection. Objective In this study, an attribute ranking algorithm, called AttributeRank, was developed to facilitate variable selection from clinical data sets. Methods The algorithm c...

Understanding UML concepts like aggregation, composition, and association is typically straightforward, both in definition and notation. However, first-year Bachelor of Computer Information Systems (BCIS) students often find these definitions and notations challenging when presented in UML diagrams. Therefore, it is essential to explore the cogniti...

The inter-curriculum needs at tertiary level lead to Business students finding themselves grouped and taught together in the same class with Computer Science and Informatics (CSI) students. This practice creates problems for instructors teaching a combination of these students as they have diversified backgrounds. It is, therefore, necessary for in...

The Decoding the Disciplines paradigm posits that each discipline has unique mental operations – often invisible to instructors due to their own expert blind spots. If the nature of these operations is not made explicit to students, they are likely to develop learning bottlenecks that could prevent them from mastering key disciplinary practices – s...

The Decoding the Disciplines paradigm posits that each discipline has its own unique set of mental operations-often invisible to instructors due to their own expert blind spots. If the nature of these operations is not made explicit to students, they are likely to develop learning bottlenecks that could prevent them from mastering key disciplinary...

The effectiveness of ways of teaching in various disciplines including Computer Science (CS) programming continues to be a debatable issue. In this study, we followed the Kirkpatrick training evaluation model to better understand how Explicit Instruction (EI) interventions in teaching computer programming to postgraduate CS students can be evaluate...

The development of problem-solving skills continues to be a challenge in various disciplines including Computer Science. In this study, we used the principles of the Decoding the Disciplines (DtDs) paradigm to better understand the mental processes that novice programmers follow when answering source code comprehension (SCC) related questions. This...

It is imperative for organisations adopting new technologies to investigate factors that may encourage or discourage users from using such technologies in the initial stages of adoption. This may help in identifying, among others, training needs to focus on in further encouraging users to continue to use the technology. This study investigated the...

Many novice programmers fail to comprehend source code and its related concepts in the same way that their instructors do. As emphasised in the Decoding the Disciplines (DtDs) framework, each discipline (including Computer Science) has its own unique set of mental operations. However, instructors often take certain important mental operations for g...

Source code comprehension (SCC) continues to be a challenge to undergraduate CS students. Understanding the mental processes that students follow while comprehending source code can be crucial in helping students to overcome related challenges. The ‘Decoding the Disciplines’ (DtDs) paradigm that is gaining popularity world-wide provides a process t...

Summary Higher education institutions are experiencing burgeoning growth in student enrolment. The subsequent increase in undergraduate class sizes means that the needs of individual students are no longer effectively addressed. Students are also less likely to actively participate in these large classes. There is a high probability that such stude...