Title: TunePad: Engaging Learners at the Intersection of Music and Code
TunePad is a free, online platform designed with the goal of empowering diverse communities of learners to create and share music through code. We are interested in the idea of music as a pervasive form of literacy with abundant connections to concepts of computer programming. Over the past three years we have developed and refined successive prototypes with over 500 middle school and high school students in a variety of learning spaces including schools, libraries, summer camps, and other out-of-school programs. This paper shares the current TunePad design along with data from three summer camps for middle school students that involved daily work with the platform. Through these camps we saw significant gains in learners’ attitudes around computer programming as measured through pre-post surveys. We also share a theoretical perspective on music and coding as an intersection of literacies that we reflect on through student-created artifacts. more »« less
McKlin, Tom; McCall, Lauren; Lee, Taneisha; Magerko, Brian; Horn, Michael; Freeman, Jason
(, SIGCSE '21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)
null
(Ed.)
Computer science educators often use multiple creative computing platforms to motivate and support students learning computer science. Arguably, we understand little about the complementary ways in which the various platforms build on students' prior experiences. This study compares two CS+music platforms used by middle school students in a summer camp to understand the unique affordances of each platform at activating and building upon prior music and computing experiences. We assess interest formation through pre and post student surveys and via interviews on the final day of the camp. The findings suggest that using different approaches to CS+music platform design may help engage students with different levels of prior music and coding experience.
Abstract Music and computer science (CS) have profound historical and structural connections, with programming music offering a promising avenue for engaging children in CS through creative expression. To foster this engagement, our team developed M-Flow, a flow-based music programming platform designed to introduce students to CS via music. Despite extensive existing research in music and CS education, experience reports and empirical studies on K-12 teachers' implementation and its impact on young kids' learning are limited. Therefore, we recruit elementary school teachers and students with no or limited prior programming experience, introducing them to M-Flow and its curriculum through a professional development workshop, a semester's job embedded support, and classroom implementation. We describe the experiences of teachers as they attempt to integrate music and CS, the challenges they face, and the influence on students' attitudes toward learning computing concepts. Specifically, we reflect on our intervention by conducting a sequential mixed-method evaluation. During the qualitative phase, we collected multiple sources of data from three teachers through focus groups and debriefings after a semester of classroom implementation. Thematic analysis of workshop activities, interviews, and debrief videos revealed three themes with seven sub-themes on teachers' integration of flow-based music programming and two themes with five sub-themes on challenges faced by the teachers. In the quantitative phase, we gathered data on attitudes and self-efficacy from 75 students taught by these teachers. Results indicate that the flow-based music programming environment provided an engaging programming experience for students and significantly increased their self-efficacy towards learning programming.
Heines, Jesse M.; Walzer, Daniel A.
(, Journal of computing sciences in colleges)
This paper reports on an after‐school program that introduced middle school students to computing through music. The program ran for two years, from October 2015 through April 2017. It involved singing, encoding music with ABC notation, and programming music with Pencil Code. We describe the program’s goals and the activities students pursued, as well as suggestions for improvement. While rigorous evaluation of such a program is difficult, we present survey and focus group results that show that students’ attitudes toward the program were positive and that they did learn some programming.
Song, Yukyeong; Tian, Xiaoyi; Barrett, Joanne; Israel, Maya; Boyer, Kristy Elizabeth
(, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences)
Summer camps have become popular for introducing K-12 learners to computer science (CS) and artificial intelligence (AI) in informal learning environments. Facilitators play crucial roles in guiding and engaging learners in these contexts, but there is limited research on their roles in informal AI learning. This paper examines facilitators’ dialogues with campers in a middle school AI summer camp, identifying eight major facilitator roles. The roles differed depending on group dynamics and project phase. The paper provides empirical grounding to define facilitators’ roles in AI learning and guide the design of professional development for camp facilitators.
Lineberry, Litany; Lee, Sarah; Ivy, Jessica; Bostick, Heather
(, Transactions on techniques in STEM education)
Responsive to broadening participation challenges, Mississippi State University (MSU) established the Bulldog Bytes Outreach Program in 2013 with a residential summer camp for middle school girls funded through the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT). Since then the program has grown to provide co-curricular activities to K12 students throughout the state. Following a pilot offering of an elementary camp in 2016, the Bulldog Bytes program delivered two of these camps in small towns during 2017, supporting a strategy of engaging under-resourced students with computing in their home communities. This paper will detail our project-based approach to learning and share experiences from the elementary camps.
Horn, Michael, Banerjee, Amartya, West, Melanie, Pinkard, Nichole, Pratt, Amy, Freeman, Jason, Magerko, Brian, and McKlin, Tom. TunePad: Engaging Learners at the Intersection of Music and Code. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10182311. International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) .Jun-2020 Web. doi:10.22318/icls2020.1237.
Horn, Michael, Banerjee, Amartya, West, Melanie, Pinkard, Nichole, Pratt, Amy, Freeman, Jason, Magerko, Brian, & McKlin, Tom. TunePad: Engaging Learners at the Intersection of Music and Code. International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), (Jun-2020). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10182311. https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2020.1237
Horn, Michael, Banerjee, Amartya, West, Melanie, Pinkard, Nichole, Pratt, Amy, Freeman, Jason, Magerko, Brian, and McKlin, Tom.
"TunePad: Engaging Learners at the Intersection of Music and Code". International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) (Jun-2020). Country unknown/Code not available. https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2020.1237.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10182311.
@article{osti_10182311,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {TunePad: Engaging Learners at the Intersection of Music and Code},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10182311},
DOI = {10.22318/icls2020.1237},
abstractNote = {TunePad is a free, online platform designed with the goal of empowering diverse communities of learners to create and share music through code. We are interested in the idea of music as a pervasive form of literacy with abundant connections to concepts of computer programming. Over the past three years we have developed and refined successive prototypes with over 500 middle school and high school students in a variety of learning spaces including schools, libraries, summer camps, and other out-of-school programs. This paper shares the current TunePad design along with data from three summer camps for middle school students that involved daily work with the platform. Through these camps we saw significant gains in learners’ attitudes around computer programming as measured through pre-post surveys. We also share a theoretical perspective on music and coding as an intersection of literacies that we reflect on through student-created artifacts.},
journal = {International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)},
number = {Jun-2020},
author = {Horn, Michael and Banerjee, Amartya and West, Melanie and Pinkard, Nichole and Pratt, Amy and Freeman, Jason and Magerko, Brian and McKlin, Tom},
}
Warning: Leaving National Science Foundation Website
You are now leaving the National Science Foundation website to go to a non-government website.
Website:
NSF takes no responsibility for and exercises no control over the views expressed or the accuracy of
the information contained on this site. Also be aware that NSF's privacy policy does not apply to this site.