Retention and dropout of higher education students is a subject that must be analysed carefully. Learning analytics can be used to help prevent failure cases. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the scientific production in this area in higher education in journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus. We use a bibliometric and systematic study to obtain deep knowledge of the referred scientific production. The information gathered allows us to perceive where, how, and in what ways learning analytics has been used in the latest years. By analysing studies performed all over the world, we identify what kinds of data and techniques are used to approach the subject. We propose a feature classification into several categories and subcategories, regarding student and external features. Student features can be seen as personal or academic data, while external factors include information about the university, environment, and support offered to the students. To approach the problems, authors successfully use data mining applied to the identified educational data. We also identify some other concerns, such as privacy issues, that need to be considered in the studies.

Students in computer science courses entering higher education begin with computer thinking and programming languages in a curricular unit (CU) that can be referred to in various ways, like CS1 or programming fundamentals. This CU is very important for the academic and professional path of those students. Teachers and those responsible for those courses must carefully define the learning objectives, the learning strategies and the assessment of this teaching-learning. Bloom's taxonomy, in its different variations, is a powerful tool that helps in these tasks and that gives clear indications on the language that is to be used - which is useful for perceiving both the level of colleagues and the level of accreditations and assessments of courses. This article provides a detailed description of Bloom's taxonomy and its changes over the years. Studies carried out in the context of teaching fundamentals of programming and using Bloom's taxonomy are listed and analyzed. In the end, the conclusions and the definition of future works are made.

Changing habits leads to changes in ways of learning and teaching. The widespread use of smartphones appears as an opportunity and at the same time as a need for adoption in higher education institutions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the scientific production on mobile learning in higher education in journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus. The sample was composed by 450 articles in total. The results obtained by bibliometric analysis showed that the publication rates continue to increase, in which journals they are published, which are the organizations and countries that publish the most, how the evolution of perspective has changed since 2010 and which are the most cited articles. We concluded that since mobile learning in higher education is a reality, there still seems to be a possibility for evolution in good quality publications.

COVID-19 forced higher education institutions to reinvent themselves. The (usually) face-to-face education has swapped to distance contingency education. This change brought about numerous challenges that impose adjustments in several dimensions, such as pedagogical strategies and the dependence on teaching platforms and computer systems—and, above all, the new relationship between the various actors (students, teachers, and management staff). All the sudden changes, combined with uncertainty concerning what was happening, created several strategies and options. This paper has the main purpose of analyzing the scientific production on higher education of EU27 academic institutions during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus. The sample is composed of 22 articles in total. The results show that the articles were published in 19 journals; their main focuses are Higher Education, COVID-19, and distance learning. In our database, we find several types of concerns, which shows that HEIs have a wide range of dimensions. We intend this article to be an instrument, not only to identify what was done in 2020, but to point out clues for the future.

An aging population and a digital society are realities. There is a need to equip older people with knowledge and computer skills so that they can participate in society, without feeling excluded or being marginalized. Third age universities are organizations around the world that specialize in teaching and learning for senior students in a more informal and more integrated way than other educational institutions. The objective of this study was to identify the existing quality publications that deal with the subject of computer education at senior universities. The SCOPUS and Web of Science databases were used, and 18 records were found according to the adopted criteria. It was found that these articles, depending on their focus, can be divided into four groups: educators, organizations/directors, students, and conceptual/review papers. Through these articles, it was possible to draw a picture of what older people’s computer learning is like, what barriers exist for students to not be able to attend these classes, as well as tips on how courses should be organized and the pedagogical methodologies that must be adopted. It is intended that this article is used as a good tool for people who work in teaching information technology to the elderly, and especially for course directors who intend to create or reformulate courses of this type for this specific age group.

Introductory programming courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees are critical to student success throughout the students’ academic and professional route but have traditional failure and dropout rates. The number of publications and reviews on the subject is growing, so we realize the need to prepare an umbrella review, or review of reviews, to group previous studies and extract more comprehensive and ambitious results. Based on the databases ACM, Google Scholar, IEEE, SCOPUS and Web of Science libraries, a formal search was created that resulted in 21 reviews on programming fundamentals in higher education context. Results include bibliometric information on the CS1 reviews, in the context of higher education (namely annual evolution, number and information on authors, types and sources of information, countries of affiliation, languages, keywords and most cited articles), the purpose of the reviews and research questions, methods (namely search strategy, databases used, eligibility criteria) and results (number of records and tables or divisions were made to catalog the articles). We present a taxonomy with four different types of purpose: general, specific, student group and teacher directed. We found very interesting catalogs that can serve as a tool for future work, whether by researchers in the field or by authors who intend to carry out reviews related to introduction to programming, especially in the context of higher education.