Open-ended tasks can be both beneficial and challenging to students learning to program. Such tasks allow students to be more creative and feel ownership over their work, but some students struggle with unstructured tasks and, without proper scaffolds, this can lead to negative learning experiences. Scratch is a widely used coding platform to teach computer science in classrooms and is designed to support learner creativity and expression. With its open-ended nature, Scratch can be used in various ways in the classroom to meet the needs of schools and districts. One challenge of using Scratch in classrooms is supporting learners in exploring their interests and fostering creativity while still meeting the instructional goals of a lesson and ensuring all students are engaged with, and understand, focal concepts and practices.
In this paper, we investigate the use of planning sheets to fa- cilitate novice programmers designing and implementing Scratch programs based on open-ended prompts. To evaluate the plan- ning sheets, we look at how closely students’ implemented Scratch projects match their plans and whether the implemented Scratch projects met the technical requirements for the given lesson. We analyzed 303 Scratch projects from 155 middle grade students (ages 10-14) who were introduced to programming via the Scratch Encore Curriculum. Completed Scratch projects that used planning sheets (202) were qualitatively coded to evaluate how closely they matched the initial plan, and Scratch programs (303) were analyzed with an automated grader to check if technical project requirements were met. Our results reveal that students that used planning sheets met significantly more technical project requirements and had more complex structures than those that did not have planning sheets. Results differ based on teacher and type of planning sheet used (physical vs. virtual). This work suggests that planning sheets are a helpful tool for young learners when completing open-ended coding projects.
more »
« less
Scaffolding Young Learners' Open-Ended Programming Projects with Planning Sheets
Given the increasing interest and need to teach students computer science in formal education settings, it is imperative to understand how to do so effectively and equitably. An important step of learning to program is being able to define the objective of a program and then plan out how to implement a program to produce the desired outcome. This step is particularly important in younger learners who may have little experience with programming or trying to create their own technological artifacts. In this paper, we explore how to scaffold young programmers in planning their open-ended programs as part of an intermediate Scratch curriculum for middle grade students. We analyze 203 paper and virtual planning documents from 103 5th-8th grade students. Our results reveal that the students often completed a majority of the document, which was consistent across grade levels. However, we found differences in student completion based on teacher and between physical and virtual documents. This work advances our understanding of how to support novice, young programmers in planning programs.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1738758
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10382311
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The 27th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
- Volume:
- 1
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 372 to 378
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
This Work in Progress (WIP) paper describes the development of a middle school program focused on an integrated STEM architectural engineering design project and exploration of career pathways. The current engineering workforce is increasingly aging, needing new engineering graduates to meet the industry demands. It is crucial to create inclusive educational programs in STEM to expose and connect with youths from diverse backgrounds, especially the demographics that are underrepresented, in STEM career paths. Middle school is a pivotal time for generating students’ awareness of and promoting pathways into STEM careers; however, opportunities to engage in engineering are often lacking or nonexistent, particularly for low-income students. Additionally, low-income students may bring particular experiences and skills from their backgrounds to engineering that may increase the innovation of engineering solutions. These assets are important to recognize and cultivate in young students. The Middle School Architectural Engineering Pilot Program (MSAEPP), drawing from social cognitive career theory and identity-based motivation, is an intervention designed to affect STEM related content and STEM identities, motivation, and career goals for low-income students using relatable topics within the building industry. The focus on architectural engineering activities is because buildings, and the industry they represent, touch everyone’s lives. The MSAEPP is planned to be implemented through the Talent Search Programs at middle schools in Pennsylvania. The Talent Search Program is one of the Federal TRIO Programs dedicated to assisting high school students in furthering their education. Penn State Talent Search Programs serve 22 schools in 8 impoverished school districts. The pilot program engages middle school students (seventh and eighth grade) in architectural engineering related lessons and activities, by exploring engineering identities interactions with architectural engineering industry professionals, and by planning potential career pathways in architectural engineering and other STEM careers with Talent Search Counselors. The purpose of this paper is to present the background and process used in this funded NSF project for developing the suite of architectural engineering related lessons and activities and the research plan for answering the research question: How does the combination of meaningful engineering learning, exposure to professional engineers, and career planning, focused on building industry engineering applications, increase identity-based motivation of students from low-income households and marginalized students in pursuing STEM careers? Answering this question will inform future work developing interventions that target similar goals and will validate and expand the identity-based motivation framework. Keywords: middle school, identity, motivation, informal education.more » « less
-
This Work in Progress (WIP) paper describes the development of a middle school program focused on an integrated STEM architectural engineering design project and exploration of career pathways. The current engineering workforce is increasingly aging, needing new engineering graduates to meet the industry demands. It is crucial to create inclusive educational programs in STEM to expose and connect with youths from diverse backgrounds, especially the demographics that are underrepresented, in STEM career paths. Middle school is a pivotal time for generating students’ awareness of and promoting pathways into STEM careers; however, opportunities to engage in engineering are often lacking or nonexistent, particularly for low-income students. Additionally, low-income students may bring particular experiences and skills from their backgrounds to engineering that may increase the innovation of engineering solutions. These assets are important to recognize and cultivate in young students. The Middle School Architectural Engineering Pilot Program (MSAEPP), drawing from social cognitive career theory and identity-based motivation, is an intervention designed to affect STEM-related content and STEM identities, motivation, and career goals for low-income students using relatable topics within the building industry. The focus on architectural engineering activities is because buildings, and the industry they represent, touch everyone’s lives. The MSAEPP is planned to be implemented through the Talent Search Programs at middle schools in Pennsylvania. The Talent Search Program is one of the Federal TRIO Programs dedicated to assisting high school students in furthering their education. Penn State Talent Search Programs serve 22 schools in 8 impoverished school districts. The pilot program engages middle school students (seventh and eighth grade) in architectural engineering-related lessons and activities, by exploring engineering identities interactions with architectural engineering industry professionals, and by planning potential career pathways in architectural engineering and other STEM careers with Talent Search Counselors. The purpose of this paper is to present the background and process used in this funded NSF project for developing the suite of architectural engineering related lessons and activities and the research plan for answering the research question: How do the combination of meaningful engineering learning, exposure to professional engineers, and career planning, focused on building industry engineering applications, increase identity-based motivation of students from low-income households and marginalized students in pursuing STEM careers? Answering this question will inform future work developing interventions that target similar goals and will validate and expand the identity-based motivation framework. Keywords: middle school, identity, motivation, informal education.more » « less
-
This Work-in-Progress paper investigates how students participating in a chemical engineering (ChE) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program conceptualize and make plans for research projects. The National Science Foundation has invested substantial financial resources in REU programs, which allow undergraduate students the opportunity to work with faculty in their labs and to conduct hands-on experiments. Prior research has shown that REU programs have an impact on students’ perceptions of their research skills, often measured through the Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment (URSSA) survey. However, few evaluation and research studies have gone beyond perception data to include direct measures of students’ gains from program participation. This work-in-progress describes efforts to evaluate the impact of an REU on students’ conceptualization and planning of research studies using a pre-post semi-structured interview process. The construct being investigated for this study is planning, which has been espoused as a critical step in the self-regulated learning (SRL) process (Winne & Perry, 2000; Zimmerman, 2008). Students who effectively self-regulate demonstrate higher levels of achievement and comprehension (Dignath & Büttner, 2008), and (arguably) work efficiency. Planning is also a critical step in large projects, such as research (Dvir & Lechler, 2004). Those who effectively plan their projects make consistent progress and are more likely to achieve project success (Dvir, Raz, & Shenhar, 2003). Prior REU research has been important in demonstrating some positive impacts of REU programs, but it is time to dig deeper into the potential benefits to REU participation. Many REU students are included in weekly lab meetings, and thus potentially take part in the planning process for research projects. Thus, the research question explored here is: How do REU participants conceptualize and make plans for research projects? The study was conducted in the ChE REU program at a large, mid-Atlantic research-oriented university during the summer of 2018. Sixteen students in the program participated in the study, which entailed them completing a planning task followed by a semi-structured interview at the start and the end of the REU program. During each session, participants read a case statement that asked them to outline a plan in writing for a research project from beginning to end. Using semi-structured interview procedures, their written outlines were then verbally described. The verbalizations were recorded and transcribed. Two members of the research team are currently analyzing the responses using an open coding process to gain familiarity with the transcripts. The data will be recoded based on the initial open coding and in line with a self-regulatory and project-management framework. Results: Coding is underway, preliminary results will be ready by the draft submission deadline. The methods employed in this study might prove fruitful in understanding the direct impact on students’ knowledge, rather than relying on their perceptions of gains. Future research could investigate differences in students’ research plans based on prior research experience, research intensity of students’ home institutions, and how their plans may be impacted by training.more » « less
-
The drive to encourage young people to pursue degrees and careers in engineering has led to an increase in student populations in engineering programs. For some institutions, such as large public research institutions, this has led to large class sizes for courses that are commonly taken across multiple programs. While this decision is reasonable from an operational and resource management perspective, research on large classes have shown that students suffer decreased engagement, motivation and achievement. Instructors, on the other hand, report having difficulty establishing rapport with their students and a growing inability to monitor students’ learning gains and provide quality individualized feedback. To address these issues, our project draws from Lattuca and Stark’s Academic Plan model, which incorporates a thorough consideration of factors influencing curricular activities that can be applied at the course, program, and institutional levels, and assumes that instructors are key actors in curriculum development and revision. We aim to revitalize feedback loops to help instructors and departments continuously improve. Recognizing that we must understand both individual and systems level perspectives, we prioritize regular engagement between faculty and institutional support structures to collaboratively identify problems and systematically establish continuous improvement. In the first phase of this NSF IUSE Institutional Transformation project, we focus on specifically prompting and studying the experiences of 8 instructors of foundational engineering courses usually taught in large class sizes across 4 different departments at a large public research institution. We collected qualitative data (semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, course-related documents) and quantitative data (student surveys and institution-provided transcript data) to answer research questions (e.g., what data do faculty teaching large foundational undergraduate engineering courses identify as being useful so that they may enhance students’ experiences and outcomes within the classes that they teach and across students’ multiple large classes?) at the intersection of learning analytics and faculty change. The data was used as a baseline to further refine data collection protocols, identify data that faculty consider meaningful and useful for managing large foundational engineering courses, and consider ways of productively leveraging institutional data to improve the learning experience in these courses. Data collection for the first phase is ongoing and will continue through the Spring 2018 semester. Findings for this paper will include high-level insights from Fall interviews with instructors as well as data visualizations created from the population-level data characterizing student performance in the foundational courses within the context of pre-college characteristics (e.g., SAT scores) and/or other academic outcomes (e.g., major switching within or out of engineer, degree attainment).more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3502718.3524769
