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Teaching Computer Science in the Victorian Certificate of Education: A Pilot Study

Published:08 March 2017Publication History

ABSTRACT

A new computer science curriculum has been developed for the Victorian Certificate of Education. It gives students direct entry into second year University computer science. The curriculum focuses on data structures and algorithms, with an emphasis on the graph abstract data type and graph algorithms. We taught a pilot course during 2014 involving students from seven schools, and administered an algorithmic thinking quiz on entry and exit, and also tested a first year university reference group. In this paper we present the curriculum and report on the evaluation. We discuss the effectiveness of our approach and make recommendations for improving future versions of the course. Pedagogical issues are discussed in relation to the cognitive education literature on the teaching of algorithmic thinking.

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
        March 2017
        838 pages
        ISBN:9781450346986
        DOI:10.1145/3017680

        Copyright © 2017 ACM

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        Publication History

        • Published: 8 March 2017

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        SIGCSE '17 Paper Acceptance Rate105of348submissions,30%Overall Acceptance Rate1,595of4,542submissions,35%

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