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1. Avoiding The Syntax: An Accessible Approach For Introducing First-Year Engineering Students To Microcontrollers

   Sierzputowski, W.; Katterle, K.; Palmer, J.; Dazey, T.; France, T. (March 2019, American Society for Engineering Education North-Central Section Conference)

   A self-paced microcontroller activity was developed for a first-year college engineering course. Because the course is multidisciplinary and some students have no programming experience, scaffolding was included to allow individuals to create working code without knowledge of software-specific syntax. This approach, made possible by free drag-and-drop coding and open-source microcontroller programs, was intentionally designed to emphasize the logic and structure of coding, avoiding the common pitfall of syntax troubleshooting for novices. Student gains were made in knowledge of and confidence in microcontrollers and electronics over this five-day activity. 

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2. Teaching Coding to Elementary Students – the Use of Col- lective Argumentation

   Foutz, Tim (June 2019, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   This project, titled Collective Argumentation Learning and Coding (CALC), aims to use the principles of collective argumentation to teach coding through appropriate reasoning. Creating and critiquing arguments as part of a coding activity promotes a more structured approach rather than the trial-and-error coding activity commonly used by novice programmers. Teaching coding via collective argumentation allows teachers to use methods that are already in use in mathematics and science instruction to teach coding, thus increasing the probability that it will be taught in conjunction with mathematics and science as regular parts of classroom instruction rather than relegated to an after-school or enrichment activity for only some students. Specific objectives of the CALC project are to - increase the attention that coding is given in the elementary classrooms taught by our participating teachers, and -direct students away from informal approaches (e.g.trial-and-error) to develop code to the more formal, structured approach recommended for novice programmers. Our research activities investigate teachers’ understanding of argumentation using the CALC concept and how the implementation of the CALC concept helps students (grades 3-5) learn how to code. The CALC approach supports the learning of coding by providing teachers with a formal, structured means to a) trace the growth of students’ understanding, and misunderstanding, of ideas (i.e., coding) as they form, b) facilitate students’ use of evidence, not opinion, to select a solution among multiple solutions (i.e., different sequencing of the code), and c) help each student realize she/he, as well as others, is a legitimate participant (i.e., a programmer) in the activity of developing, assessing and implementing an idea (e.g., coding of a robot). This paper/presentation discussed the first phase of an on-going investigation and focuses on a prototype graduate-level course designed for and taught to practicing elementary school teachers. The discussion outlines how the course impacted the participating teachers content knowledge of coding and their belief that coding can be made an integral part of everyday lessons, not as an add-on activity. 

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3. Introducing Coding into Teacher Education: An Interdisciplinary Robotics Experience for Education and Engineering Students

   Kidd, J.; Kaipa, K.; Sacks, S.; de Souza Almeida, L. M. (April 2020, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference)

   Despite nationwide mandates to integrate computer science into P-6 curriculum, most P-6 preservice teachers (PSTs) are not exposed to coding or computational thinking during their professional preparation, and are unprepared to teach these topics. This study, conducted as a part of an NSF-funded project, explores a teacher preparation model designed to increase PSTs’ coding knowledge and coding self-efficacy. PSTs in an educational technology course partnered with engineering undergraduates (EUs) in a computational methods course and worked side-by-side on robotics activities to develop skill and confidence with basic programming concepts and block coding. Students utilized experience gained from these interdisciplinary partnerships to lead robotics activities with fifth and sixth grade students (FSGs) in an after-school technology club. Findings from quantitative studies suggest that the implementation of the approach resulted in a significant increase in both PSTs’ coding knowledge and coding self-efficacy. Qualitative studies revealed that most PSTs’ and EUs’ perceived value of the project was positive. 

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4. Making sense of coding and robotics: Professional learning with elementary school teachers.

   Boz, T. (April 2021, Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)

   n this paper we described the process of four in-service elementary school teachers learning coding in a blended professional learning course developed and delivered through a federally funded research practice partnership project. We focused on the collective nature of learning and use activity theory (Engeström, 1999) to analyze connections among mediations, contradictions, and meaningful practices that were occurring for teachers in the course over time. The results showed that professional learning programs to support elementary teachers’ implementation of robotics and coding teaching and learning can systematically foster teachers’ collaboration in learning coding/robotics and developing lesson activities incorporating coding and robotics in meaningful ways in the day to day curriculum and teaching in their elementary classrooms. 

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5. Utility of creative exercises as an assessment tool for revealing student conceptions in organic chemistry

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D4RP00310A  

   Grieger, Krystal; Leontyev, Alexey (March 2025, Chemistry Education Research and Practice)

   Creative exercises (CEs) consist of open-ended prompts to which students provide a series of relevant, distinct, and accurate statements, thus requiring that students make connections between concepts. In this study, CEs were incorporated into a one-semesterSurvey of Organic Chemistrycourse to identify what connections between chemistry concepts students made and what incorrect conceptions or misconceptions about chemistry students held. Students (N= 79) enrolled in the course first completed a practice CE as an in-class group activity followed by individually responding to a CE bonus problem on each of their four course exams. The number of different concepts students addressed for each CE increased over the semester, indicating that students made increasing content connections about course material; however, misconceptions about early concepts, such as nomenclature and assigning configurations, remained consistent throughout the semester. Furthermore, the CEs were found to be instrumental in shedding light on misconceptions and knowledge structures of students across varying performance levels. Overall, students reported that they viewed the CEs favorably and would like to see CEs incorporated in future courses. 

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