More Like this

1. What Do Students Learn About Experimental Research by Designing Interactive Fiction Games?

   Amato, A. ( January 2020 , The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 1 (pp. 553-556))

   Research design is challenging to learn, and students have few hands-on experiences to practice it. We explore how StudyCrafter, a platform for creating and running research studies in the form of interactive fiction games, promotes students’ perceived and measured abilities in certain key research skills. Fourteen graduate students in a game design course used StudyCrafter during a 5-week-long unit on designing and conducting experimental research studies. Analyses of pre and posttests, and of students’ written post-unit reflections, showed that students’ confidence and abilities in designing research studies increased, but not their abilities to critique studies. This study contributes an understandingmore »of the opportunities and challenges in using interactive fiction games to support students in developing their experimental research skills.« less
2. Debugging by Design: Students’ Reflections on Designing Buggy E-Textile Projects

   Fields, D. A. ; Kafai, Y. B. ( April 2020 , Proceedings of Constructionism 2020)

   Much attention has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications such as games, robots, or e-textiles to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching them strategies or providing them with test programs. The idea of designing bugs for learning—or debugging by design—makes learners again agents of their own learning and, more importantly, of making and solving mistakes. In this paper, we report on our first implementation of “debugging by design” activities in amore »classroom of 25 high school students over a period of eight hours as part of a longer e-textiles unit. Here students were asked to craft buggy circuits and code for their peers to solve. In this paper we introduce the design of the debugging by design unit and, drawing on observations and interviews with students and the teacher, address the following research questions: (1) What did students gain from designing and solving bugs for others? (2) How did this experience shape students’ completion of the e-textiles unit? In the discussion, we address how debugging by design contributes to students’ learning of debugging skills.« less
3. Debugging by Design: Students’ Reflections on Designing Buggy E-Textile Projects

   Fields, D. A. ; Kafai, Y. B. ( January 2020 , Proceedings of Constructionism 2020)

   Much attention has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications such as games, robots, or e-textiles to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching them strategies or providing them with test programs. The idea of designing bugs for learning—or debugging by design—makes learners again agents of their own learning and, more importantly, of making and solving mistakes. In this paper, we report on our first implementation of “debugging by design” activities in amore »classroom of 25 high school students over a period of eight hours as part of a longer e-textiles unit. Here students were asked to craft buggy circuits and code for their peers to solve. In this paper we introduce the design of the debugging by design unit and, drawing on observations and interviews with students and the teacher, address the following research questions: (1) What did students gain from designing and solving bugs for others? (2) How did this experience shape students’ completion of the e-textiles unit? In the discussion, we address how debugging by design contributes to students’ learning of debugging skills.« less
4. Debugging by Design: Students’ Reflections on Designing Buggy E-Textile Projects

   Fields, D. A. ( January 2020 , Proceedings of Constructionism 2020)

   B. Tangney, J. Bryne (Ed.)

   Much attention has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications such as games, robots, or e-textiles to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching them strategies or providing them with test programs. The idea of designing bugs for learning—or debugging by design—makes learners again agents of their own learning and, more importantly, of making and solving mistakes. In this paper, we report on our first implementation of “debugging by design” activities in amore »classroom of 25 high school students over a period of eight hours as part of a longer e-textiles unit. Here students were asked to craft buggy circuits and code for their peers to solve. In this paper we introduce the design of the debugging by design unit and, drawing on observations and interviews with students and the teacher, address the following research questions: (1) What did students gain from designing and solving bugs for others? (2) How did this experience shape students’ completion of the e-textiles unit? In the discussion, we address how debugging by design contributes to students’ learning of debugging skills.« less
5. Using Digital Sketching and Augmented Reality Mobile Apps to Improve Spatial Visualization in a Freshmen Engineering Course

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--33501  

   Bairaktarova, Diana ; Van Den Einde, Lelli ; Bell, John ( June 2019 , 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Spatial reasoning skills contribute to performance in many STEM fields. For example, drawing sectional views of three-dimensional objects is an essential skill for engineering students. There is considerable variation in the spatial reasoning skills of prospective engineering students, putting some at risk for compromised performance in their classes. This study takes place in a first-year engineering Spatial Visualization course to integrate recent practices in engineering design education with cognitive psychology research on the nature of spatial learning. We employed three main pedagogical strategies in the course - 1) in class instruction on sketching; 2) spatial visualization training; and 3) manipulationmore »of physical objects (CAD/3D print creations). This course endeavors to use current technology, online accessibility, and implementation of the three pedagogical strategies to bring about student growth in spatial reasoning. This study is designed to determine the effect of adding two different spatial reasoning training apps to this environment. Over 230 students (three sections) participated in our study. In two of the three sections, students received interactive spatial visualization training using either a spatial visualization mobile touchscreen app in one section or an Augmented Reality (AR) app in the other section. Research suggests that there are benefits to using the Spatial Vis Classroom mobile app for college students.The app has been shown to increase student persistence resulting in large learning gains as measured by the Purdue assessment of spatial visualization (PSVT-R), especially for students starting with poor spatial visualization skills. The Spatial Vis Classroom app can be used in the classroom or assigned as homework. The AR app is designed to help users develop their mental rotation abilities. It is designed to support a holistic understanding of 3-dimensional objects, and research has shown that, in combination with a traditional curriculum, it increases students’ abilities also measured by the PSVT-R. Of particular interest, the data suggest that the app overcomes the advantage found by males over females in a traditional class alone focused on spatial reasoning. Both of the course sections were required to use the apps for approximately the same time in class and outside of class. Students in the control section were required to do hand sketching activities in class and outside of class, with roughly the same completion time as for the sections with the apps. Students grades were not affected by using the three different approaches as grading was based on completion only. Based on current literature, we hypothesize that overall benefits (PSVT-R gains) will be comparable across the 3 treatments but there will be different effects on attitude and engagement (confidence,enjoyment, and self-efficacy). Lastly, we hypothesize that the treatments will have different effects on male/female and ethnic categories of the study participants. The final paper will include an analysis of results and a report of the findings.« less