This paper considers how a curricular design that integrated computer programming and creative movement shaped students’ engagement with computing. We draw on data from a camp for middle schoolers, focusing on an activity in which students used the programming environment NetLogo to re-represent their physical choreography. We analyze the extent to which students noticed incompatibilities (mismatches between possibilities in dance and NetLogo), and how encountering them shaped their coding. Our findings suggest that as students attended to incompatibilities, they experienced struggle, but persisted and engaged in iterative cycles of design. Our work suggests that tensions between arts and programming may promote student engagement.
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Agency and Expressivity in Programming Play
Computer programming has been conceptualized as an expressive medium, but little is known about how to best support students in exercising agency and engagement in coding tasks. This paper draws on data from a five-day summer camp for middle school students that integrated computer science and movement. We focus on an activity in which students created choreography and modeled it in the programming environment NetLogo. The task was designed with the goal of creating opportunities for students to exercise agency and expressivity while coding. We analyze the extent to which incompatibilities, or moments of mismatch between what is possible in the dance versus NetLogo environments, shaped students’ agency and exploration. Our findings suggest that designing with incompatibilities positioned students with agency over their models and supported their own expressive goals.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1742257
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10311175
- Editor(s):
- de Vries, E.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Computersupported collaborative learning
- Volume:
- 1
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1573-4552
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract This paper outlines the potential gains for Constructionist research and praxis in modelling that might be obtained by recognising the power of the Patch—a humble computational being in the NetLogo modelling environment that has been overshadowed by its more popular fellow agent, the Turtle. To contextualise this opportunity, I describe how Constructionist modelling has thrived by promoting forms of learning that rely on learners’ identifying with agents. I argue that patches are a neglected agent type in this multi‐agent modelling tradition, and that the possibilities for learners to adopt the patch perspective in support of exploratory forms of modelling and aesthetic expression have been under‐researched. Nevertheless, I show there are a variety of powerful ways for learners––both individually and in groups––to identify with patches. I describe ongoing research showing how taking an aesthetic approach to patches has the potential to support individuals and groups in powerful forms of learning with and about multi‐agent modelling.
Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic
Turtles (movable agents in Logo and Constructionist environments descended from Logo) can be ‘transitional objects’ that provide learners a way to make powerful ideas their own.
These agents can be powerful ‘objects‐to‐think‐with’ in large part because they encourage learners to identify with them in a form of learning known as ‘syntonic learning’.
Expressive activities that draw on learners’
aesthetic interests can support their learning with and about computational representations.Multi‐agent modelling is a powerful extension of Logo‐based learning environments that provides access to powerful ideas about complex systems and their emergent properties.
In the multi‐agent setting, individual learners and/or groups of learners can identify syntonically with agents to provide entry points for reasoning about complexity.
What this paper adds
Patches (non‐movable agents in the NetLogo modelling environment) are under‐represented in the research on multi‐agent modelling, and the potential for learners to adopt the patches’ perspective has been neglected.
An aesthetically driven approach to patches can ground students’ understanding of their expressive value.
Participatory activities in which learners play the role of patches (called ‘Stadium Card’ activities) can ground the patch perspective, so that learners can achieve a form of syntonicity and/or collectively adopt the perspective of patches in the aggregate.
Participatory activities that blend intrinsic and extrinsic perspectives on the patch grid can further enhance learners’ facility with programming for patches and their understanding of patches’ collective expressive power.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Balancing the focus between turtles and patches can enrich the modelling toolbox of learners new to agent‐based modelling.
Patches
do capture important aspects of individual and collective experience, and so can be good objects‐to‐think‐with, especially when conceptualising phenomena at a larger scale.The expressive potential of the patch grid is an important topic for computer science as well (eg, through 2D cellular automata). This is a rich context for learning in itself, which can be made accessible to groups of learners through physical or virtual participatory role‐play.
Moreover, physical or virtual grids of people‐patches may exhibit novel aggregate computational properties that could in turn become interesting areas for research in computer science.
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Abstract Natural language helps express mathematical thinking and contexts. Conventional mathematical notation (CMN) best suits expressions and equations. Each is essential; each also has limitations, especially for learners. Our research studies how programming can be a advantageous third language that can also help restore mathematical connections that are hidden by topic‐centred curricula. Restoring opportunities for surprise and delight reclaims mathematics' creative nature. Studies of children's use of language in mathematics and their programming behaviours guide our iterative design/redesign of mathematical microworlds in which students, ages 7–11, use programming in their regular school lessons
as a language for learning mathematics . Though driven by mathematics, not coding, the microworlds develop the programming over time so that it continues to support children's developing mathematical ideas. This paper briefly describes microworlds EDC has tested with well over 400 7‐to‐8‐year‐olds in school, and others tested (or about to be tested) with over 200 8‐to‐11‐year‐olds. Our challenge was to satisfy schools' topical orientation and fit easily within regular classroom study but use and foreshadow other mathematical learning to remove the siloes. The design/redesign research and evaluation is exploratory, without formal methodology. We are also more formally studying effects on children's learning. That ongoing study is not reported here.Practitioner notes What is already known
Active learning—
doing —supports learning.Collaborative learning—doing
together —supports learning.Classroom discourse—focused, relevant
discussion , not just listening—supports learning.Clear articulation of one's thinking, even just to oneself, helps develop that thinking.
What this paper adds
The common languages we use for classroom mathematics—natural language for conveying the meaning and context of mathematical situations and for explaining our reasoning; and the formal (written) language of conventional mathematical notation, the symbols we use in mathematical expressions and equations—are both essential but each presents hurdles that necessitate the other. Yet, even together, they are insufficient especially for young learners.
Programming, appropriately designed and used, can be the third language that both reduces barriers and provides the missing expressive and creative capabilities children need.
Appropriate design for use in regular mathematics classrooms requires making key mathematical content obvious, strong and the ‘driver’ of the activities, and requires reducing tech ‘overhead’ to near zero.
Continued usefulness across the grades requires developing children's sophistication and knowledge with the language; the powerful ways that children rapidly acquire facility with (natural) language provides guidance for ways they can learn a formal language as well.
Implications for policy and/or practice
Mathematics teaching can take advantage of the ways children learn through experimentation and attention to the results, and of the ways children use their language brain even for mathematics.
In particular, programming—in microworlds driven by the mathematical content, designed to minimise distraction and overhead, open to exploration and discovery
en route to focused aims, and in which childrenself ‐evaluate—can allow clear articulation of thought, experimentation with immediate feedback.As it aids the mathematics, it also builds computational thinking and satisfies schools' increasing concerns to broaden access to ideas of computer science.
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The purpose of this methods paper is to identify the opportunities and applications of agent-based modeling (ABM) methods to interpretative qualitative and educational research domains. The context we explore in this paper considers graduate engineering attrition, which has been a funded research focus of our group for ten years. In attrition research, as with all human research, it is impossible and unethical to imperil real graduate students by subjecting them to acute stressors that are known to contribute to attrition in order to “test” different combinations of factors on persistence and attrition. However, agent-based modeling (ABM) methods have been applied in other human decision-making contexts in which a computer applies researcher programmed logic to digital actors, invoking them to make digital decisions that mimic human decision making. From our research team’s ten years of research studying graduate socialization and attrition and informed from a host of theories that have been used in literature to investigate doctoral attrition, this paper compares the utility of two programming languages, Python and NetLogo, in conducting agent-based modeling to model graduate attrition as a platform. In this work we show that both platforms can be used to simulate attrition and persistence scenarios for thousands of digital agent-students simultaneously to produce results that agree with both with previous qualitative data and that agree with aggregate attrition and persistence statistics from literature. The two languages differ in their integrated development environments (IDE) with the methods of producing the models customizable to fit the needs of the study. Additionally, the size of the intended agent pool impacted the efficiency of the data collection. As computational methods can transform educational research, this work provides both a proof-of-concept and recommendations for other researchers considering employing these methods with these and similar platforms. Ultimately, while there are many programming languages that can perform agent-based modeling tasks, researchers are responsible for translating high quality, theory-driven, interpretive research into a computational model that can model human decision-making processes.more » « less
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Gresalfi, M.S. (Ed.)This study is from a larger design-based research project contributing to efforts to incorporate CT into K-12 education by studying how middle school students can learn about CT in the context of programming and art. During the first year of the study, we held a five-day summer camp taught by four mathematics teachers using NetLogo. This poster begins to examine the role of the teachers, focusing on the strategies they used to position themselves and the structure and agency of each task.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/icls2021.581
