Access Foundation Programmes are a widening-participation initiative designed to encourage engagement in higher education among underrepresented groups, including those with socioeconomic and educational disadvantage. In particular, mature students enrolled in these programmes experience greater difficulties making the transition to tertiary education, especially when they opt to study disciplines traditionally considered difficult. Computer programming is perceived as a traditionally difficult subject with typically lower pass rates and progression rates than other subjects.
This paper describes the first of a three-cycle action research study examining the perceived effects of a structured Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) Programme for mature students enrolled in a computer science programming module for an Access Foundation Programme in an Irish University. The focus of this qualitative study was to evaluate the perceived effect of a PAL programme on learning and whether it offered a po
Computer scientists have developed a new system to speed up computer programs in the Unix Shell. A new system, PaSH, has been developed to make computer programs run faster while also delivering accuracy in the Unix shell.
Developing software used to require programming skills. Today, a growing number of people are building websites, games and even AI programs without writing a line of code.