Education
Michael was born in Svendborg, Denmark. He went to Nordre Skole for primary and lower secondary school and to Svendborg Statsgymnasium for upper secondary school. He earned anPersonal life
Michael E. Caspersen is married to Susanne Caspersen; they have two children, Christina and Christopher, and four grandchildren, Filippa, Lucca, Asta, and Petra.Leadership roles: Education in Computer Science / Informatics
Michael has been a major force for improving education in computing at all levels on a national and international scale. * Founding member and first chair of the Danish CS Educators' Association (1995-2000). * Founding member of the Scandinavian Pedagogy of Programming Network established in 2004, leading to publication of a book, a novel and innovative collection of contributions that address all aspects of teaching programming. * Chair or co-chair five Danish Ministerial groups on various aspects of computing. * Co-chair of the Committee on European Computing Education (CECE), which was created to foster further development of informatics education at all levels in Europe. * Second Chair (the first chair was Dame Wendy Hall) of the coalition Informatics for All, which was formed in 2018; its members are the ACM Europe Council, the CEPIS Education Committee, Informatics Europe, and IFIP. * Member of the Digital Council of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV), and a member of its Steering Committee for Science & Engineering in Education. (2018-) * Special Advisor on Digital Education and Skills to the Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager (2022-2023)Selected technical contributions
The programming process
*2007. PhD thesis: Educating Novices in the Skills of Programming *2009. STREAM: A First programming process *2018. Principles of programming educationIndicators of success
*2005. An Investigation of potential success factors for an introductory model-driven programming course *2006. Abstraction ability as an indicator of success for learning object-oriented programmings *2007. Mental models and programming aptitude *2008. Optimists have more fun, but do they learn better? On the influence of emotional and social factors on learning introductory computer science *2008. Abstraction ability as an indicator of success for learning computing science?Exemplary Examples (Example Program Quality)
*2007. Beauty and the Beast – Toward a Measurement Framework for Example Program Quality *2015. Beauty and the Beast: on the readability of object-oriented example programs *2008. Evaluating OO example programs for CS1Informatics for all
*2013. Computational Thinking and Practice — A Generic Approach to Computing in Danish High Schools *2014. Model-based thinking and practice: a top-down approach to computational thinkingFailure rates in intro programming
*2007. Failure rates in introductory programming *2019. Failure rates in introductory programming: 12 years lateCognitive load theory in computing education
*2007. PhD thesis: Educating Novices in the Skills of Programming *2007. Instructional design of a programming course: a learning theoretic approachReferences
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caspersen, Michael E. 1960 births Living people Computer science educators Formal methods people Computer science writers 20th-century Danish academics 21st-century Danish educators