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The expansion of computer science (CS) into K-12 contexts has resulted in a diverse ecosystem of curricula designed for various grade levels, teaching a variety of concepts, and using a wide array of different programming languages and environments. Many students will learn more than one programming language over the course of their studies. There is a growing need for computer science assessment that can measure student learning over time, but the multilingual learning pathways create two challenges for assessment in computer science. First, there are not validated assessments for all of the programming languages used in CS classrooms. Second, it is difficult to measure growth in student understanding over time when students move between programming languages as they progress in their CS education. In this position paper, we argue that the field of computing education research needs to develop methods and tools to better measure students' learning over time and across the different programming languages they learn along the way. In presenting this position, we share data that shows students approach assessment problems differently depending on the programming language, even when the problems are conceptually isomorphic, and discuss some approaches for developing multilingual assessments of student learning over time.
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The Invisibility Issue: High School Students’ Informal Conceptions of Everyday Physical Computing Systems.
While making physical computational artifacts such as robots or electronic textiles is growing in popularity in CS education, little is known about student informal conceptions of these systems. To study this, we video-recorded think-aloud sessions (~10 minutes each) of 22 novice CS high school students explaining their understanding of everyday physical computing systems and qualitatively analyzed transcripts and student drawings for their structural, behavioral, and functional understanding of these systems. Most students identified the presence of programs in making these systems functional but struggled to account them structurally and behaviorally. A few students pointed out probable programming constructs in shaping underlying mechanisms, drawing from their prior programming experiences. To integrate these systems in computing education, we call for pedagogical designs to address the invisibility of computation—both of structural interconnections and of program execution.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1742140
- PAR ID:
- 10309424
- Editor(s):
- de Vries, E.; Hod, Y.; Ahn, J.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2021
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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