Computational Thinking (CT) is being infused into curricula in a variety of core K-12 STEM courses. As these topics are being introduced to students without prior programming experience and are potentially taught by instructors unfamiliar with programming and CT, appropriate lesson design might help support both students and teachers. “Use-Modify-Create" (UMC), a CT lesson progression, has students ease into CT topics by first “Using" a given artifact, “Modifying" an existing one, and then eventually “Creating" new ones. While studies have presented lessons adopting and adapting this progression and advocating for its use, few have focused on evaluating UMC’s pedagogical effectiveness and claims. We present a comparison study between two CT lesson progressions for middle school science classes. Students participated in a 4-day activity focused on developing an agent-based simulation in a block-based programming environment. While some classrooms had students develop code on days 2-4, others used a scaffolded lesson plan modeled after the UMC framework. Through analyzing student’s exit tickets, classroom observations, and teacher interviews, we illustrate differences in perception of assignment difficulty from both the students and teachers, as well as student perception of artifact “ownership" between conditions. more »« less
As computer science instruction gets offered to more young learn- ers, transitioning from elective to requirement, it is important to explore the relationship between pedagogical approach and student behavior. While different pedagogical approaches have particular motivations and intended goals, little is known about to what degree they satisfy those goals.
In this paper, we present analysis of 536 students’ (age 9-14, grades 4-8) work within a Scratch-based, Use-Modify-Create (UMC) curriculum, Scratch Encore. We investigate to what degree the UMC progression encourages students to engage with the content of the lesson while providing the flexibility for creativity and exploration.
Our findings show that this approach does balance structure with flexibility and creativity, allowing teachers wide variation in the degree to which they adhere to the structured tasks. Many students utilized recently-learned blocks in open-ended activities, yet they also explored blocks not formally taught. In addition, they took advantage of open-ended projects to change sprites, backgrounds, and integrate narratives into their projects.
Franklin, Diana; Salac, Jean; Crenshaw, Zachary; Turimella, Saranya; Klain, Zipporah; Anaya, Marco; Thomas, Cathy(
, Proceedings of the 2020 International Computing Education Research Conference (ICER’20))
As computer science instruction gets offered to more young learn- ers, transitioning from elective to requirement, it is important to explore the relationship between pedagogical approach and student behavior. While different pedagogical approaches have particular motivations and intended goals, little is known about to what degree they satisfy those goals.
In this paper, we present analysis of 536 students’ (age 9-14, grades 4-8) work within a Scratch-based, Use-Modify-Create (UMC) curriculum, Scratch Encore. We investigate to what degree the UMC progression encourages students to engage with the content of the lesson while providing the flexibility for creativity and exploration.
Our findings show that this approach does balance structure with flexibility and creativity, allowing teachers wide variation in the degree to which they adhere to the structured tasks. Many students utilized recently-learned blocks in open-ended activities, yet they also explored blocks not formally taught. In addition, they took advantage of open-ended projects to change sprites, backgrounds, and integrate narratives into their projects.
In recent years, Wyoming has developed Computer Science (CS) standards for adoption and use within K-12 classrooms. These standards, adopted in January of 2022, go into effect for the 2022-2023 school year. The University of Wyoming has offered two different computer science week-long professional developments for teachers. Many K-12 teachers do not have a CS background, so developing CS lessons plans can be a challenge in these PDs.This research study is centered around three central questions: 1) To what extent did K-12 teachers integrate computing topics into their PD created lesson plans; 2) How do the teacher perceptions from the two CS PDs compare to each other; and 3) How was the CS PD translated to classroom activity? The first PD opportunity (n=14), was designed to give hands-on learning with CS topics focused on cybersecurity. The second PD opportunity (n=28), focused on integrating CS into existing curricula. At the end of each of these PDs, teacher K-12 teachers incorporated CS topics into their selected existing lesson plan(s). Additionally, a support network was implemented to support excellence in CS education throughout the state. This research study team evaluated the lesson plans developed during each PD event, by using a rubric on each lesson plan. Researchers collected exit surveys from the teachers. Implementation metrics were also gathered, including, how long each lesson lasted, how many students were involved in the implementation, what grades the student belonged to, the basic demographics of the students, the type of course the lesson plan was housed in, if the K-12 teacher reached their intended purpose, what evidence the K-12 teacher had of the success of their lesson plan, data summaries based on supplied evidence, how the K-12 teachers would change the lesson, the challenges and successes they experienced, and samples of student work. Quantitative analysis was basic descriptive statistics. Findings, based on evaluation of 40+ lessons, taught to over 1500 K-12 students, indicate that when assessed on a three point rubric of struggling, emerging, or excellent - certain components (e.g., organization, objectives, integration, activities & assessment, questions, and catch) of K-12 teacher created lessons plans varied drastically. In particular, lesson plan organization, integration, and questions each had a significant number of submissions which were evaluated as "struggling" [45%, 46%, 41%] through interesting integration, objectives, activities & assessment, and catch all saw submissions which were evaluated as "excellent" [43%, 48%, 43%, 48%]. The relationship between existing K-12 policies and expectations surfaces within these results and in combination with other findings leads to implications for the translation of current research practices into pre-collegiate PDs.
Broneak, Cassandra; Rosato, Jennifer(
, ICER 2021: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research)
null
(Ed.)
To meet the rising demand for computer science (CS) courses, K-12 educators need to
be prepared to teach introductory concepts and skills in courses such as Computer
Science Principles (CSP), which takes a breadth-first approach to CS and includes
topics beyond programming such as data, impacts of computing, and networks. Educators
are now also being asked to teach more advanced concepts in courses such as the College
Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science A (CSA) course, which focuses on advanced programming using Java and includes topics such as objects, inheritance, arrays, and recursion. Traditional CSA curricula have not used content or pedagogy designed to
engage a broad range of learners and support their success. Unlike CSP, which is attracting
more underrepresented students to computing as it was designed, CSA continues to enroll
mostly male, white, and Asian students [College Board 2019, Ericson 2020, Sax 2020].
In order to expand CS education opportunities, it is crucial that students have an
engaging experience in CSA similar to CSP. Well-designed differentiated professional
development (PD) that focuses on content and pedagogy is necessary to meet individual
teacher needs, to successfully build teacher skills and confidence to teach CSA, and
to improve engagement with students [Darling-Hammond 2017]. It is critical that as
more CS opportunities and courses are developed, teachers remain engaged with their
own learning in order to build their content knowledge and refine their teaching practice
[CSTA 2020]. CSAwesome, developed and piloted in 2019, offers a College Board endorsed
AP CSA curriculum and PD focused on supporting the transition of teachers and students
from CSP to CSA. This poster presents preliminary findings aimed at exploring the
supports and challenges new-to-CSA high school level educators face when transitioning
from teaching an introductory, breadth-first course such as CSP to teaching the more
challenging, programming-focused CSA course. Five teachers who completed the online
CSAwesome summer 2020 PD completed interviews in spring 2021. The project employed
an inductive coding scheme to analyze interview transcriptions and qualitative notes
from teachers about their experiences learning, teaching, and implementing CSP and
CSA curricula. Initial findings suggest that teachers’ experience in the CSAwesome
PD may improve their confidence in teaching CSA, ability to effectively use inclusive
teaching practices, ability to empathize with their students, problem-solving skills,
and motivation to persist when faced with challenges and difficulties. Teachers noted
how the CSAwesome PD provided them with a student perspective and increased feelings
of empathy. Participants spoke about the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on
their own learning, student learning, and teaching style. Teachers enter the PD with
many different backgrounds, CS experience levels, and strengths, however, new-to-CSA
teachers require further PD on content and pedagogy to transition between CSP and
CSA. Initial results suggest that the CSAwesome PD may have an impact on long-term
teacher development as new-to-CSA teachers who participated indicated a positive impact
on their teaching practices, ideologies, and pedagogies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity are becoming increasingly intertwined, with AI and Machine Learning (AI/ML) being leveraged for cybersecurity, and cybersecurity helping address issues caused by AI. The goal in our exploratory curricular initiative is to dovetail the need to teach these two critical, emerging topics in highschool, and create a suite of novel activities, 'AI & Cybersecurity for Teens' (ACT) that introduces AI/ML in the context of cybersecurity and prepares high school teachers to integrate them in their cybersecurity curricula. Additionally, ACT activities are designed such that teachers (and students) build a deeper understanding of how ML works and how the machine actually "learns". Such understanding will aid more meaningful interrogation of critical issues such as AI ethics and bias. ACT introduces core ML topics contextualized in cybersecurity topics through a range of programming activities and pre-programmed games in NetsBlox, an easy-to-use block-based programming environment. We conducted 2 pilot workshops with 12 high school cybersecurity teachers focused on ACT activities. Teachers' feedback was positive and encouraging but also highlighted potential challenges in implementing ACT in the classroom. This paper reports on our approach and activities design, and teachers' experiences and feedback on integrating AI into high school cybersecurity curricula.
@article{osti_10122993,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Use, Modify, Create: Comparing Computational Thinking Lesson Progressions for STEM Classes},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10122993},
DOI = {10.1145/3304221.3319786},
abstractNote = {Computational Thinking (CT) is being infused into curricula in a variety of core K-12 STEM courses. As these topics are being introduced to students without prior programming experience and are potentially taught by instructors unfamiliar with programming and CT, appropriate lesson design might help support both students and teachers. “Use-Modify-Create" (UMC), a CT lesson progression, has students ease into CT topics by first “Using" a given artifact, “Modifying" an existing one, and then eventually “Creating" new ones. While studies have presented lessons adopting and adapting this progression and advocating for its use, few have focused on evaluating UMC’s pedagogical effectiveness and claims. We present a comparison study between two CT lesson progressions for middle school science classes. Students participated in a 4-day activity focused on developing an agent-based simulation in a block-based programming environment. While some classrooms had students develop code on days 2-4, others used a scaffolded lesson plan modeled after the UMC framework. Through analyzing student’s exit tickets, classroom observations, and teacher interviews, we illustrate differences in perception of assignment difficulty from both the students and teachers, as well as student perception of artifact “ownership" between conditions.},
journal = {Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education},
author = {Lytle, Nicholas and Barnes, Tiffany and Cateté, Veronica and Boulden, Danielle and Dong, Yihuan and Houchins, Jennifer and Milliken, Alexandra and Isvik, Amy and Bounajim, Dolly and Wiebe, Eric},
}
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