Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain and the SOLO taxonomy are being increasingly widely used in the design and assessment of courses, but there are some drawbacks to their use in computer science. This paper reviews the literature on educational taxonomies and their use in computer science education, identifies some of the problems that arise, proposes a new taxonomy and discusses how this can be used in application-oriented courses such as programming.

Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain and the SOLO taxonomy are being increasingly widely used in the design and assessment of courses, but there are some drawbacks to their use in computer science. This paper reviews the literature on educational taxonomies and their use in computer science education, identifies some of the problems that arise, proposes a new taxonomy and discusses how this can be used in application-oriented courses such as programming.

An increase in student motivation is often cited as an expected effect of software visualization, but, as far as the authors are aware, no controlled experiments have yet demonstrated this. This paper therefore presents a controlled evaluation of this effect, conducted within the framework of self-determination theory. Students were tasked with removing redundant recursion in a multiple recursive algorithm. The experimental group (N=19) used the SRec program visualization system, while the control group (N=17) could use any programming tool in which they were proficient, such as BlueJ or Eclipse. The increase in motivation was measured by the difference between student scores in preand post-tests of their motivation. Statistically significant increases were observed for the two more determined forms of motivation, intrinsic motivation (p=.01) and extrinsic motivation via identified regulation (p=.03). Student feedback about their subjective acceptance of SRec reinforced these results. These findings give experimental support to expectations for software visualization in terms of motivation. Several paths for future work are identified, in particular, the need for more experiments under various conditions to achieve deeper understanding of the motivational effect of program visualization.

This paper describes the practical initiative to include Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Spanish educational system’s curriculum at an early age. This proposal is in line with the current trend of introducing AI in school curricula all over the world. To this end, we propose an Artificial Intelligence workshop for middle schools within the existing subject, Technology, Programming and Robotics. In order to test the suitability of introducing AI at an early age, we conducted the activities at a bilingual middle school in Madrid. As evaluation tools, a quiz and motivational study of the students concerning AI was carried out using Situational Motivational Scale (SIMS) before and after introducing the activities. Responses of 84 students were analysed and the conclusion was reached that it is slightly better to introduce AI at an early age.

This article presents a double evaluation carried out in the subject Complements for disciplinary training II: Computing, corresponding to the Master's degree teacher training in secondary education, baccalaureate, vocational training and languages taught by the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. The students of the subject had to learn how to prepare simple web pages, using HTML, CSS and JavaScript programming languages. To this end, the flipped classroom technique was used to present the necessary contents, combined with the adaptation of Aronson's cooperative learning puzzle technique, used to carry out a group practice that reflected the knowledge acquired. It is worth mentioning, as a complement to the two techniques used, the use of an adapted assessment rubric, which was provided to the students at the beginning of the teaching block. The evaluation was carried out during two consecutive academic years, 2018/2019 and 2019/2020. There were important differences between the two studies: in the first study, the students' previous self-assigned level was much higher (2.8 points as opposed to 1.4 points on a scale of 1 to 5). The other difference, even more relevant, was that in the second year all teaching was done at home, in a non-attendance format, on a mandatory basis, due to the period of confinement decreed by the state of alarm at that moment, because of the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, popularly known as coronavirus. At the end of the experience, the students expressed their satisfaction with the learning acquired and with the tasks performed, in both cases. The techniques used were well-appreciated, in the first year more than in the second, and especially flipped classroom. The scores obtained were, in addition, always very relevant.