RESEARCH TRENDS AT THE INFORMATICS METHODOLOGY DEPARTAMENT

Computer Science Education Research (CSER) and Computing Engineering Education Research (CEER) are the main trends of the Informatics Methodology Department. There are 16 people including eight PhD students making research work at the department (chaired by prof. Valentina Dagienė) of Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics.

Most work is related to two main fields of CSER and CEER:
I. Research on informatics and engineering solutions for technology enhanced learning.
II. Research on software (especially educational one) localisation and adaptations to Lithuanian language.

The focus of our work is in the interactive visual systems in informatics education, the content formation of electronic teaching and learning, the interaction, functionality, and localisation peculiarities of its parts, e.g. learning objects and learning activities. The department investigates high school students’ understandings and experiences of programming and fundamental concepts in informatics. We have carrier out for many years a large scale data collection on students’ participation in olympiads and contests in informatics. By investigating new innovative learning environments and learning tools we expect to build evidence for the effectiveness of combined technical and pedagogical innovations, i.e. how the tools or environments are used in practice.

For research we are using literature and comparative analysis, taxonomy and ontology, multiple criteria decision analysis, case study, qualitative and quantitative methods.

Our research includes several subareas.

• Analysing learning and teaching processes using information technology.
• Investigating students' understandings and experiences of programming concepts and processes.
• Analysing software internationalisation and establishing criteria.
• Systematising the main computer terms and phrases of localised software, developing vocabularies and dictionaries of computer terminology.
• Preparing specialised tools to support teaching and learning in programming, including semi-automatic assessment and feedback tools, program animation and simulation tools.

Recent years topics of PhD studies: Evaluation of algorithm-code complexes in informatics contests; Designing adaptive tools for teaching algorithms; Automatic testing of programming tasks’ solutions (programs and algorithms); Research on the Web 2.0 technologies in education; A complex metadata model for digital learning resources; Localising the internet software; Localizing software for deaf people; Research on learning activities in mathematics; Computer-based model of constructive geometry proofs.

Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Informatics Methodology Department
Updated: 13-04-2011