Isabella Graßl

Elias Goller, Gordon Fraser, Isabella Graßl

Block-based programming environments like Scratch have become widely adopted in Computer Science Education, but the mouse-based drag-and-drop interface can challenge users with disabilities. While prior work has provided solutions supporting children with visual impairment, these solutions tend to focus on making content perceivable and do not address the physical interaction barriers faced by users with motor disabilities. To bridge this gap, we introduce MeowCrophone, an approach that uses voice control to allow editing code in Scratch. MeowCrophone supports clicking elements, placing blocks, and navigating the workspace via a multi-modal voice user interface that uses numerical overlays and label reading to bypass physical input entirely. As imperfect speech recognition is common in classrooms and for children with dysarthria, MeowCrophone employs a multi-stage matching pipeline using regular expressions, phonetic matching, and a custom grammar. Evaluation shows that while free speech recognition systems achieved a baseline success rate of only 46.4%, MeowCrophone's pipeline improved results to 82.8% overall, with simple commands reaching 96.9% accuracy. This demonstrates that robust voice control can make Scratch accessible to users for whom visual aids are insufficient.

Isabella Graßl, Christopher Lazik, Shalini Chakraborty et al.

Student engagement is critical for effective learning in software modelling, yet fostering motivation and inclusivity remains a challenge. While existing research has focused on modelling tools, notations, and assessment, little attention has been given to how the choice of problem domains and the diversity, relatability, and cultural perspectives they bring shape students' learning experiences. This study explores how problem domains and teaching methods influence motivation, engagement, inclusiveness, and feedback in modelling education. To investigate these dimensions, we conducted parallel surveys with 90 students and 22 educators. Our findings reveal disconnects between educator assumptions and student preferences: Students show greatest motivation for socially relevant domains and prefer choice in selection, while educators overestimate interest in study-related domains. The study identifies how minor design choices can exclude students. Students perceive feedback as meaningful when visibly acted upon. These findings suggest inclusive domain selection is central to student motivation; thus, we recommend student-centred domain selection.

Isabella Graßl, Gordon Fraser, Daniela Damian

Creative approaches to attract students to software engineering at an early age are emerging, yet their differential impact on gender remains unclear. This study investigates whether design thinking's empathy-driven approach addresses the documented gender gap in interest in software engineering. In a 10-week curriculum-integrated design thinking software development course with 55 secondary school students aged 13-15 from two schools in Canada, we examined gendered differences in perceived gains in knowledge and interest, as well as in social-emotional experiences. Our results show that both girls and boys gained perceived knowledge in software development. However, girls showed significant improvements in self-efficacy, interest, engagement with sustainability topics, and well-being, including optimism, sense of usefulness, and social connectedness. Positive emotions were strongest during creative, collaborative phases, while technical tasks led to some boredom, especially among boys, though they still benefited overall. This suggests that human-centred design thinking might be one effective way to address gender equity challenges, though we need more differentiated technical implementations.

Isabella Graßl, Birgit Penzenstadler

Mental health and well-being are major concerns in higher education and professional fields such as software engineering, yet are often overlooked in curricula. This paper describes our approach to include mental health, well-being, and sustainability in software engineering education in two ways: (1) well-being-focused software projects that ask students to design technical solutions or research addressing mental health and sustainability or societal challenges, and (2) brief classroom interventions such as short reflective discussions and team-building activities. We argue that this combination can help students see software engineering more broadly while creating healthier learning environments. Our analysis of reflections from 60 students found several positive outcomes: students gained a more human-centred perspective, had more team discussions about mental health, and began to see well-being as inspiration for using software to benefit society and individuals rather than merely as a technical or business tool. By combining technical skills with awareness of well-being, we argue that software engineering education can prepare future developers to be both skilled programmers and responsible professionals who care about human well-being.

Isabella Graßl

The first generation of students is learning to program alongside GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) tools, raising questions about how young learners critically engage with them and perceive ethical responsibilities. While prior research has focused on university students or developers, little is known about secondary school novices, who represent the next cohort of software engineers. To address this gap, we conducted an exploratory study with 84 German secondary school students aged 16-19 attending software development workshops. We examined their critical thinking practices in AI-assisted programming, perceptions of AI ethics and responsibility, and gender-related differences in their views. Our results reveal an AI paradox: students demonstrate strong ethical reasoning and awareness about AI, yet many report integrating AI-generated code without a thorough understanding of it. The majority of our cohort attributed significant responsibility for AI practices to politics and corporations, potentially reflecting Germany's cultural context, with its strict regulations and data privacy discourse. Boys reported more frequent and experimental use of AI-assisted programming, whereas girls expressed greater scepticism and emphasised peer collaboration over GenAI assistance. Our findings highlight the importance of culturally responsive software engineering education that strengthens critical AI literacy in AI-assisted programming by linking ethics to concrete code artefacts and preparing young learners for this AI-driven software landscape.

Isabella Graßl

When software is designed by people from diverse identities and experiences, it is more likely to be inclusive and address a broader range of user needs. However, for transgender and non-binary students in software engineering, the path to becoming such creators may be marked by unique challenges. While existing research explores gender minorities in professional software engineering, limited attention has been given to their educational journey, a key phase for ensuring equal opportunities and preventing exclusion in the tech workforce. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the experiences of transgender and non-binary students in software engineering, with a particular focus on their motivations for entering the field, the obstacles they encounter, and potential strategies for fostering greater inclusivity within their academic environments. Based on 13 semi-structured interviews with transgender and non-binary students across the globe, we found that gender identity plays an indirect role in their decision to pursue software engineering. Key factors include the appeal of remote work and a personal desire to create more inclusive technologies. Although the participants did not report direct discrimination within their universities, many described experiencing verbal insults, judgment, intolerance, and hostility, all of which negatively impacted their mental health. These challenges often stem from socio-cultural norms and a lack of representation. Despite these obstacles, the students remain committed to their choice of study but call for greater institutional support, structural changes, and increased representation. From these findings, we suggest concrete steps to support students, regardless of gender identity.

Isabella Graßl, Benoit Baudry

Software testing is often perceived as monotonous, which can negatively influence students' emotional engagement with testing. While prior work suggests that humor can increase engagement in professional software development contexts, we know little about humor's effect in software testing education. This paper explores how humorous elements in software testing assignments affect students' emotional engagement, sense of belonging, and creative thinking. We introduced humor in introductory software testing courses at universities in Canada and Germany, and conducted a mixed-methods study with students. Our results show that humor had a strong positive influence on students' experiences of software testing. Students perceived testing as more engaging and less monotonous, felt more comfortable and accepted in class, and reported increased creative thinking about testing tasks. These effects were particularly strong for female students, especially with respect to sense of belonging. Our findings suggest that humor represents a low-threshold pedagogical approach which is beneficial for students, and has the potential to create a more welcoming learning environment.

Isabella Graßl, Alexander Serebrenik, Giuseppe Destefanis

Educational resources may frame students' perceptions of who belongs in software engineering, which is relevant given the field's ongoing gender gap. However, we know little about the hidden curriculum regarding gender in online learning spaces. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of 200 manually analysed English and German software engineering tutorials on YouTube, examining gender representation through contextual domains and linguistic identity markers. Our results show that male characters and masculine linguistic defaults dominate the tutorials. We identified an agency gap, in which technical and decision-making roles are almost exclusively assigned to male actors, while female actors are either absent or tend to passive, low-agency roles. The findings indicate that software engineering education on YouTube may reproduce gendered norms, in which linguistic and representational gatekeeping may serve as a symbolic barrier to software engineering.

Luisa Greifenstein, Isabella Graßl, Gordon Fraser

The widespread establishment of computational thinking in school curricula requires teachers to introduce children to programming already at primary school level. As this is a recent development, primary school teachers may neither be adequately prepared for how to best teach programming, nor may they be fully aware why they have to do so. In order to gain a better understanding of these questions, we contrast insights taken from practical experiences with the anticipations of teachers in training. By surveying 200 teachers who have taught programming at primary schools and 97 teachers in training, we identify relevant challenges when teaching programming, opportunities that arise when children learn programming, and strategies how to address both of these in practice. While many challenges and opportunities are correctly anticipated, we find several disagreements that can inform revisions of the curricula in teaching studies to better prepare primary school teachers for teaching programming at primary schools.