The Lugano Computing Education Resarch Lab
Luce is a research lab at the Software Institute
of USI in Lugano, Switzerland.
Our research, teaching, and service is related to computing education,
with a specific focus on learning to program.
What we are up to
Come meet us at upcoming events and check out materials and recordings of past events.
- 12/12/2022 SPLASH-E '22 Talk: Expressions in Java: Essential, Prevalent, Neglected?
- 09/12/2022 GymInf Verteidigung von Hans Adrian-Schmassmann Lambda-Kalkül für das Gymnasium
- 02/11/2022 Hasler Workshop on the Research Situation in CS Education Research in Switzerland Workshop Participation
- 20/10/2022 SI Seminar by Matthias Hauswirth Talk: Pitfalls in Teaching Programming
- 29/09/2022 SVIA edu-i-day 2022 Organizing the Swiss Highschool Informatics Teacher Association (SVIA) edu-i-day
- 09/09/2022 Crista Lopes Visit Talk: Exercises in Programming Style
- 11/08/2022 Martin Henz Visit Meeting about Source Academy, SICP, and Programming Education
What we produced
Our research connects programming languages and computing education. We design tools and approaches, conduct studies, teach at all levels of the university, contribute to textbooks, and help in teacher education. Here are some of our current favorites:

Expression Tutor
Understand Expressions as Trees

Notional Machine Collection
Pedagogic Devices for Teaching Programming

Progmiscon
Turn Misconceptions into Learning Opportunities

PyTamaro
Problem Decomposition with Graphics
Publications
- 2021 Research Paper Wrong Answers for Wrong Reasons: The Risks of Ad Hoc Instruments
- 2021 Demonstration Paper Conceptual Checks for Programming Teachers
- 2021 Conference Paper A Curated Inventory of Programming Language Misconceptions
- 2020 Book Chapter Operators and Expressions
- 2020 Conference Paper Notional Machines in Computing Education: The Education of Attention
- 2019 Short Paper Experiences in bridging from functional to object-oriented programming
- 2019 Conference Paper Impact of Explicit Failure and Success-driven Preparatory Activities on Learning
- 2017 Short Paper The program is the system: introduction to programming without abstraction
- 2017 Conference Paper Metacognitive calibration when learning to program
- 2017 Invited Paper If you have parents, you can learn recursion