Lecturer

Email: catherine.higgins@tudublin.ie

Tel: 01 220 6491

Dr Catherine Higgins has extensive experience in third level education as a lecturer in software development. She joined the Faculty of Business in Technological University Dublin (formally Dublin Institute of Technology) in 2000. She has also worked in industry as a software developer and in software quality assurance. Her research interests include research methods, computational thinking, and computer science education particularly for first year computing undergraduates.

Current research focuses on the area of computer science education with a particular focus on first year undergraduate outcomes. 

For a full list of publications, click here

Academic Publications (Journals)

Higgins, C., O'Leary, C., McAvinia, C., & Ryan, B. J. (2024). Generating a Template for an Educational Software Development Methodology for Novice Computing Undergraduates: An Integrative Review. Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 23, 12.

Academic Publications (Conference Proceedings)

Higgins, C., O’Leary, C., McAvinia, C & Ryan, B. (2019) A Study of First Year Undergraduate Computing Students’ Experience of Learning Software Development in the Absence of a Software Development Process. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1

Strong, G., Higgins, C., Bresnihan, N., & Millwood, R. (2017). A survey of the prior programming experience of undergraduate computing and engineering students in Ireland. In IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education (pp. 473-483). Springer, Cham.

Higgins, C., Mtenzi, F., O'Leary, C., Hanratty, O. & McAvinia, C. (2017). A Conceptual Framework for a Software Development Process based on a Computational Thinking. 11th International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED17), Valencia, Spain. 6-8 March, 2017. pp. 455-464.

Higgins, C., Mtenzi, F., O’Leary, C., Hanratty, O., & McAvinia, C. (2017). A Software Development Process for Freshman Undergraduate Students. In IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education. pp. 599-608. Springer, Cham.

Higgins, C. (1996). A Formal Preparation for Object-Oriented Query Optimisation. In OOIS’95 (pp. 89-93). Springer, London.

Chapters in Books

Higgins, C., O’Leary, C., McAvinia, C., Ryan, B. (2020) Novice Learner Experiences in Software Development: A Study of Freshman Undergraduates. In: Lane H.C., Zvacek S., Uhomoibhi J. (eds) Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1220. Springer, Cham.

Higgins, C. (2020) Software Development Processes Designed for First Year Computing Undergraduates. In: Tatnell, A. (ed) Encyclopaedia of Education and Information Technologies. ISBN 978-3-030-10575-4. pp. 1564-1576. Springer.

Strong, G., Higgins, C., Bresnihan, N., & Millwood, R. (2020). Prior Programming Experience of Undergraduate Computing and Engineering Students in Ireland. In: Tatnell, A. (ed) Encyclopaedia of Education and Information Technologies. ISBN 978-3-030-10576-1_190 pp. 1315-1321. Springer.

Fitzpatrick, R., & Higgins, C. (1998). Usable software and its attributes: A synthesis of software quality, European Community law and human-computer interaction. In People and Computers XIII (pp. 3-21). Springer, London.