Title: Introducing Coding through Tabletop Board Games and Their Digital Instantiations across Elementary Classrooms and School Libraries
This experience report describes an approach for helping elementary schools integrate computational thinking and coding by leveraging existing resources and infrastructure that do not rely on 1-1 computing. A particular focus is using the school library and media center as a site to complement and enhance classroom instruction on coding. Further, our approach builds upon "unplugged" knowledge and practices that are already familiar to and motivating for students, in this case tabletop board games. Through these games, students can use their prior knowledge and ease with tabletop gaming mechanics to cue relevant ideas for core computational concepts. We describe a model and an instructional unit spanning across classroom and school library settings that builds upon board game play as a source domain for computing knowledge. Building on expansive framing, the model emphasizes instructional linkages being made between one domain (the tabletop board game) and another (specially designed Scratch project shells with partially complete code blocks) such that the reasoning activities and different contexts are seen as instantiations of the same encompassing context. We present the experiences of three elementary school teachers as they implemented the unit in their classrooms and with their school librarian. We also show initial findings on the impact of the unit on student interest (N=87), as measured by pre- and post- surveys. We conclude with lessons learned about ways to improve the unit and future classroom implementations. more »« less
Lee, Victor R.; Poole, Frederick; Clarke-Midura, Jody; Recker, Mimi(
, The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020)
Gresalfi, Melissa; Horn, Ilana Seidel
(Ed.)
This paper presents an instructional design using expansive framing to introduce computer programming to upper elementary students. By using a tabletop board game as the context for learning, bridging connections between the learning in the board game and its digital instantiation, and privileging student authorship, we show how two students developed and transferred their understanding of several computational practices, including procedures and conditional logic, from the board game into their design of digital games in Scratch.
Lee, Victor R.; Poole, Frederick; Clarke-Midura, Jody; Recker, Mimi(
, The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020)
Gresalfi, Melissa; Horn, Ilana Seidel
(Ed.)
This paper presents an instructional design using expansive framing to introduce computer programming to upper elementary students. By using a tabletop board game as the context for learning, bridging connections between the learning in the board game and its digital instantiation, and privileging student authorship, we show how two students developed and transferred their understanding of several computational practices, including procedures and conditional logic, from the board game into their design of digital games in Scratch.
Puttick, G.; Cassidy, M.; Tucker‐Raymond, E.; Troiano, G. M.; Harteveld, C.(
, Journal of Research in Science Teaching)
Abstract
Much research attention has been focused on learning through game playing. However, very little has been focused on student learning through game making, especially in science. Moreover, none of the studies on learning through making games has presented an account of how students engage in the process of game design in real time. The present study seeks to address that gap. We report an exploratory embedded case study in which three groups of students in one classroom created a computer game designed to teach peers about climate science, while drawing on scientific knowledge, principles of game design, and computational thinking practices. Data sources were student design sheets, computer video, and audio screen capture while students created their game, and interviews after completing the curriculum unit. A theme‐driven framework was used to code the data. A curricular emphasis on systems across climate systems, game design, and computational thinking practices provided a context designed to synergistically supported student learning. This embedded case study provides a rich example of what a collaborative game design task in a constructionist context looks like in a middle school science classroom, and how it supports student learning. Game design in a constructionist learning environment that emphasized learning through building a game allowed students to choose their pathways through the learning experience and resulted in learning for all despite various levels of programming experience. Our findings suggest that game design may be a promising context for supporting student learning in STEM disciplines.
Recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR) devices and their maturity as a technology offers new modalities for interaction between learners and their learning environments. Such capabilities are particularly important for learning that involves hands-on activities where there is a compelling need to: (a) make connections between knowledge-elements that have been taught at different times, (b) apply principles and theoretical knowledge in a concrete experimental setting, (c) understand the limitations of what can be studied via models and via experiments, (d) cope with increasing shortages in teaching-support staff and instructional material at the intersection of disciplines, and (e) improve student engagement in their learning.
AR devices that are integrated into training and education systems can be effectively used to deliver just-in-time informatics to augment physical workspaces and learning environments with virtual artifacts. We present a system that demonstrates a solution to a critical registration problem and enables a multi-disciplinary team to develop the pedagogical content without the need for extensive coding. The most popular approach for developing AR applications is to develop a game using a standard game engine such as UNITY or UNREAL. These engines offer a powerful environment for developing a large variety of games and an exhaustive library of digital assets. In contrast, the framework we offer supports a limited range of human environment interactions that are suitable and effective for training and education. Our system offers four important capabilities – annotation, navigation, guidance, and operator safety. These capabilities are presented and described in detail.
The above framework motivates a change of focus – from game development to AR content development. While game development is an intensive activity that involves extensive programming, AR content development is a multi-disciplinary activity that requires contributions from a large team of graphics designers, content creators, domain experts, pedagogy experts, and learning evaluators. We have demonstrated that such a multi-disciplinary team of experts working with our framework can use popular content creation tools to design and develop the virtual artifacts required for the AR system. These artifacts can be archived in a standard relational database and hosted on robust cloud-based backend systems for scale up. The AR content creators can own their content and Non-fungible Tokens to sequence the presentations either to improve pedagogical novelty or to personalize the learning.
Recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR) devices and their maturity as a technology offers new modalities for interaction between learners and their learning environments. Such
capabilities are particularly important for learning that involves hands-on activities where there is a compelling need to: (a) make connections between knowledge-elements that have been taught at different times, (b) apply principles and theoretical knowledge in a concrete experimental setting, (c) understand the limitations of what can be studied via models and via experiments, (d) cope with increasing shortages in teaching-support staff and instructional material at the intersection of disciplines, and (e) improve student engagement in their learning. AR devices that are integrated into training and education systems can be effectively used to deliver just-in-time informatics to augment physical workspaces and learning environments with virtual artifacts. We present a system that demonstrates a solution to a critical registration problem and enables a multi-disciplinary team to develop the pedagogical content without the need for extensive coding. The most popular approach for developing AR applications is to develop a game using a standard game engine such as UNITY or UNREAL. These engines offer a powerful environment for developing a large variety of games and an exhaustive library of digital assets. In contrast, the framework we offer supports a limited range of human environment interactions that are suitable and effective for training and education. Our system offers four important capabilities – annotation, navigation, guidance, and operator safety. These capabilities are presented and described in detail. The above framework motivates a change of focus – from game development to AR content development. While game development is an intensive activity that involves extensive programming, AR content development is a multi-disciplinary activity that requires contributions from a large team of graphics designers, content creators, domain experts, pedagogy experts, and learning evaluators. We have demonstrated that such a multi-disciplinary team of experts working with our framework can use popular content creation tools to design and develop the virtual artifacts required for the AR system. These artifacts can be archived in a standard relational database and hosted on robust cloud-based backend systems for scale up. The AR content creators can own their content and Non-fungible Tokens to sequence the presentations either to improve pedagogical novelty or to personalize the learning.
Lee, Victor R., Poole, Frederick, Clarke-Midura, Jody, Recker, Mimi, and Rasmussen, Melissa. Introducing Coding through Tabletop Board Games and Their Digital Instantiations across Elementary Classrooms and School Libraries. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10159176. SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education . Web. doi:10.1145/3328778.3366917.
Lee, Victor R., Poole, Frederick, Clarke-Midura, Jody, Recker, Mimi, & Rasmussen, Melissa. Introducing Coding through Tabletop Board Games and Their Digital Instantiations across Elementary Classrooms and School Libraries. SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, (). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10159176. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366917
Lee, Victor R., Poole, Frederick, Clarke-Midura, Jody, Recker, Mimi, and Rasmussen, Melissa.
"Introducing Coding through Tabletop Board Games and Their Digital Instantiations across Elementary Classrooms and School Libraries". SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (). Country unknown/Code not available. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366917.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10159176.
@article{osti_10159176,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Introducing Coding through Tabletop Board Games and Their Digital Instantiations across Elementary Classrooms and School Libraries},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10159176},
DOI = {10.1145/3328778.3366917},
abstractNote = {This experience report describes an approach for helping elementary schools integrate computational thinking and coding by leveraging existing resources and infrastructure that do not rely on 1-1 computing. A particular focus is using the school library and media center as a site to complement and enhance classroom instruction on coding. Further, our approach builds upon "unplugged" knowledge and practices that are already familiar to and motivating for students, in this case tabletop board games. Through these games, students can use their prior knowledge and ease with tabletop gaming mechanics to cue relevant ideas for core computational concepts. We describe a model and an instructional unit spanning across classroom and school library settings that builds upon board game play as a source domain for computing knowledge. Building on expansive framing, the model emphasizes instructional linkages being made between one domain (the tabletop board game) and another (specially designed Scratch project shells with partially complete code blocks) such that the reasoning activities and different contexts are seen as instantiations of the same encompassing context. We present the experiences of three elementary school teachers as they implemented the unit in their classrooms and with their school librarian. We also show initial findings on the impact of the unit on student interest (N=87), as measured by pre- and post- surveys. We conclude with lessons learned about ways to improve the unit and future classroom implementations.},
journal = {SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education},
author = {Lee, Victor R. and Poole, Frederick and Clarke-Midura, Jody and Recker, Mimi and Rasmussen, Melissa},
}
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