- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10162219
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1327 to 1327
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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null (Ed.)Developing narrative and computational thinking skills is crucial for K-12 student learning. A growing number of K-12 teachers are utilizing digital storytelling, where students create short narratives around a topic, as a means of creating motivating problem-solving activities for a variety of domains, including history and science. At the same time, there is increasing awareness of the need to engage K-12 students in computational thinking, including elementary school students. Given the challenges that the syntax of text-based programming languages poses for even novice university-level learners, block-based programming languages have emerged as an effective tool for introducing computational thinking to elementary-level students. Leveraging the unique affordances of narrative and computational thinking offers significant potential for student learning; however, integrating them presents significant challenges. In this paper, we describe initial work toward solving this problem by introducing an approach to block-based programming for interactive storytelling to engage upper elementary students (ages 9 to 11) in computational thinking and narrative skill development. Leveraging design principles and best practices from prior research on elementary-grade block-based programming and digital storytelling, we propose a set of custom blocks enabling learners to create interactive narratives. We describe both the process used to derive the custom blocks, including their alignment with elements of interactive narrative and with specific computational thinking curricular goals, as well as lessons learned from students interacting with a prototype learning environment utilizing the block-based programming approach.more » « less
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Recent years have seen growing interest in utilizing digital storytelling, where students create short narratives around a topic, as a means of creating motivating problem-solving activities in K-12 education. At the same time, there is increasing awareness of the need to engage students as young as elementary school in complex topics such as physical science and computational thinking. Building on previous research investigating block-based programming activities for storytelling, we present an approach to block-based programming for interactive digital storytelling to engage upper elementary students (ages 9 to 10) in computational thinking and narrative skill development. We describe both the learning environment that combines block-based narrative programming with a rich, interactive visualization engine designed to produce animations of student generated stories, as well as an analysis of students using the system to create narratives. Student generated stories are evaluated from both a story quality perspective as well as from their ability to communicate and demonstrate computational thinking and physical science concepts and practices. We also explore student behaviors during the story creation process and discuss potential improvements for future interventions.more » « less
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Digital storytelling, which combines traditional storytelling with digital tools, has seen growing popularity as a means of creating motivating problem-solving activities in K-12 education. Though an attractive potential solution to integrating language arts skills across topic areas such as computational thinking and science, better understanding of how to structure and support these activities is needed to increase adoption by teachers. Building on prior research on block-based programming for interactive storytelling, we present initial results from a study of 28 narrative programs created by upper elementary students that were collected in both classroom and extracurricular contexts. The narrative programs are evaluated across multiple dimensions to better understand the types of narrative programs being created by the students, characteristics of the students who created the narratives, and what types of support could most benefit the students in their narrative program construction. In addition to analyzing the student-created narrative programs, we also provide recommendations for promising system-generated and instructor-led supports.more » « less
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Abstract Using Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein as inspiration, this paper presents a Frankenstein‐themed transmedia storytelling experience, which encompasses simple hands‐on activities and an online narrative experience that allows students to model scientific work and engage in various science activities. The study aimed to test whether students can develop higher science and creative self‐efficacy beliefs, and a stronger science curiosity, by engaging in the transmedia experience that combined hands‐on and online narrative activities compared with participating in only hands‐on or online narrative experiences. Our paper presents findings from two classroom studies using survey findings. Results show that all three conditions (hands‐on, online game experience and transmedia) had a significant positive impact on learners' self‐efficacy beliefs and curiosity, but there was no additional benefit for the transmedia condition. Nevertheless, our work has various implications for learning sciences about the potential benefits and drawbacks of transmedia storytelling experiences. Our findings can help educators and researchers design and run transmedia storytelling projects.Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic
Transmedia storytelling is a popular and adaptable learning application.
Transmedia storytelling can be beneficial due to transfer of learning.
Transmedia storytelling may foster learners' engagement and knowledge acquisition.
What this paper adds
The paper presents a Frankenstein‐themed transmedia experience that combines digital and hands‐on activities and borrows several themes from Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus .Findings from this study show that transmedia storytelling can boost learners' science and creative self‐efficacy beliefs and science curiosity.
However, transmedia storytelling combining digital and hands‐on experiences is not more effective in bolstering self‐efficacy beliefs and curiosity than digital or hands‐on experiences alone.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Transmedia storytelling might have unintended consequences for learning because it may exhaust learners' cognitive resources.
Learners' transliteracy skills and competencies may influence what benefits they gain from partaking in transmedia storytelling experiences.
Educators need to take learners' transliteracy skills into consideration when they wish to design and/or use transmedia storytelling experiences for learning purposes.
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