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1. Computational concepts, practices, and collaboration in high school students’ debugging electronic textile projects.

   Jayathirtha, G. (January 2018, Conference Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2018)

   Debugging, a recurrent practice while programming, can reveal significant information about student learning. Making electronic textile (e-textile) artifacts entails numerous opportunities for students to debug across circuitry, coding, crafting and designing domains. In this study, 69 high school students worked on a series of four different e-textiles projects over eight weeks as a part of their introductory computer science course. We analyzed debugging challenges and resolutions reported by students in their portfolios and interviews and found not only a wide range of computational concepts but also the development of specific computational practices such as being iterative and incremental in students’ debugging e-textiles projects. In the discussion, we address the need for more studies to recognize other computational practices such as abstraction and modularization, the potential of hybrid contexts for debugging, and the social aspects of debugging. 

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2. Growing Mindsets: Debugging by Design to Promote Students’ Growth Mindset Practices in Computer Science Class.

   Morales-Navarro, L.; Fields, D. A.; Kafai, Y. B. (January 2021, Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2021)

   de Vries, E.; Hod, Y.; Ahn, J. (Ed.)

   Mindsets play an important role in persevering in computer science: while some learners perceive bugs as opportunities for learning, others become frustrated with failure and see it as a challenge to their abilities. Yet few studies and interventions take into account the motivational and emotional aspects of debugging and how learning environments can actively promote growth mindsets. In this paper, we discuss growth mindset practices that students exhibited in “Debugging by Design,” an intervention created to empower students in debugging—by designing e-textiles projects with bugs for their peers to solve. Drawing on observations of four student groups in a high school classroom over a period of eight hours, we examine the practices students exhibited that demonstrate the development of growth mindset, and the contexts where these practices emerged. We discuss how our design-focused, practice-first approach may be particularly well suited for promoting growth mindset in domains such as computer science. 

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3. Pair debugging of electronic textiles projects: Analyzing think-aloud protocols for high school students’ strategies and practices while problem solving.

   Jayathirtha, G.; Fields, D. A.; Kafai, Y. B. (January 2020, The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020)

   Gresalfi, M.; Horn, I. (Ed.)

   Much attention has focused on student learning while making physical computational artifacts such as robots or electronic textiles, but little is known about how students engage with the hardware and software debugging issues that often arise. In order to better understand students’ debugging strategies and practices, we conducted and video-recorded eight think- aloud sessions (~45 minutes each) of high school student pairs debugging electronic textiles projects with researcher-designed programming and circuitry/crafting bugs. We analyzed each video to understand pairs’ debugging strategies and practices in navigating the multi- representational problem space. Our findings reveal the importance of employing system-level strategies while debugging physical computing systems, and of coordinating between various components of physical computing systems, for instance between the physical artifact, representations on paper, and the onscreen programming environment. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and designing instruction and tools for learning with and debugging physical computing systems. 

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4. A "Low-Floor" Multimeter: Supporting E-textile Debugging by Revealing Voltage and Continuity

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3372713  

   Sadan, Rona (February 2020, SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   STEAM curriculums are widely implemented in K-12 schools, as part of the effort to promote computational thinking skills. This, together with increased accessibility of electronic components and kits, has opened the door for novices to engage in physical computing projects. Debugging these projects challenges students to learn and apply electrical concepts together with programming skills. Multimeter, the most common tool for measuring electric circuits, is placing a very high bar for novices to use. This paper presents a work in progress toward the development of a low-floor multimeter. The tool is designed to be used by high-school students with no prior electricity knowledge as part of their e-textile curricula. By providing students the opportunity to form a conceptual understanding of voltage and current flow, we hope to scaffold their exploration and debugging process in a meaningful way. 

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5. Speaking from Experience: Co-designing E-textile Projects with Older Adult Fiber Crafters

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3569009.3572736  

   Jelen, Ben; Lazar, Amanda; Harrington, Christina; Pradhan, Alisha; Siek, Katie A. (February 2023, Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction)

   Researchers support race, gender, and age diverse groups of people to create with maker electronics. These groups include older adults, who are often overlooked as not interested or capable of learning new technologies due to ageist stereotypes. One approach, often involving e-textiles, leverages crafting as a bridge to broaden participation in making. We investigated ways to broaden participation in maker electronics for older adults by remotely co-designing e-textile projects with 6 older adult crafters over the course of 5 workshop sessions for a total of 45 hours. We developed a deeper understanding of their practices, identifying a Planner-Improviser Spectrum for how they approached their craft, and created medium fdelity prototypes. Our design implications draw on our participants’ crafting experience and their experience in the workshop to highlight what e-textile toolkit designers can learn from skilled older adult crafters, such as selecting familiar materials, supporting aesthetic goals, and making electronics more attainable. 

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