Computer Science Education Research Group (COMPSER)

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COMPSER research group has been merged with Learning + Technology Group. These pages will no longer be updated.

The computer science education research group has two main areas of work. First, in several projects new web-based and internet-based tools for supporting education, especially computer science education are developed and evaluated. Second, research is carried out to better understand how students learn programming and understand programming concepts. Based on this, new tools and instructional methods for basic computer science, especially for programming, are developed.

The funding for the group comes from several sources. The laboratory achieved the status of Center of Excellence in Education in Finland (korkealaatuisen koulutuksen yksikkö) for years 2001-2003 and again for years 2004-2006, which provides some basic funding from Ministry of Education, some of which is still available. Second, research funding have been obtained from Academy of Finland, and Finnish Virtual University. In addition, several smaller projects have been funded by Helsinki University of Technology directly.

COMPSER acts as a SIG bringing together teachers and researches in the topic area. Common activities of the SIG include joint meetings 1-2 times in a year, and study groups and seminars in which articles and new ideas within the topic are discussed through. The study groups meet irregularly throughout the year.

COMPSER is overlapping Software Visualization Group (SVG), which concentrates on developing tools and methods for software visualization. In joint activities SVG concentrates on technology and COMPSER concentrates on applications in education and evaluation research.

News

Past visitors

Dr. Anders Berglund from Uppsala University, Sweden gave a special course in Computing Education Research at TKK in spring 2007. The course concentrated mainly on qualitative research methods. For more information, see here. in CER.

Professor Mordechai Ben-Ari from Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) visited the Laboratory of Information Processing Science in July-December 2005 to collaborate with COMPSER and SVG groups. As one of his activities he gave a Seminar "The role of theory in computer science education research". For more information, see here.

Dr Mike Joy from University of Warwick, UK, visited the COMPSER group in January 2006, to give a special course in automatic assessment technologies.

Professor Rocky Ross from Montana State University visited TKK in August 2004 and gave a course Next Generation Education.