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This experience report describes an approach for helping elementary schools integrate computational thinking and coding by leveraging existing resources and infrastructure that do not rely on 1-1 computing. A particular focus is using the school library and media center as a site to complement and enhance classroom instruction on coding. Further, our approach builds upon "unplugged" knowledge and practices that are already familiar to and motivating for students, in this case tabletop board games. Through these games, students can use their prior knowledge and ease with tabletop gaming mechanics to cue relevant ideas for core computational concepts. We describe a model and an instructional unit spanning across classroom and school library settings that builds upon board game play as a source domain for computing knowledge. Building on expansive framing, the model emphasizes instructional linkages being made between one domain (the tabletop board game) and another (specially designed Scratch project shells with partially complete code blocks) such that the reasoning activities and different contexts are seen as instantiations of the same encompassing context. We present the experiences of three elementary school teachers as they implemented the unit in their classrooms and with their school librarian. We also show initial findings on the impact of the unit on student interest (N=87), as measured by pre- and post- surveys. We conclude with lessons learned about ways to improve the unit and future classroom implementations.
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Pre-College Computing Experiences: Lessons Learned from Expansive and Inclusive Options in Surveys
This experience report shares lessons learned when expanding demographic options on an undergraduate survey. The study is designed to better understand the relationship between pre-college computing experiences and the choice to major in computing, particularly focusing on Black women’s experiences. Expansive options for gender (5 plus an openended), race (18 non-mutually-exclusive options), and disability (8) gave respondents more opportunity for specificity. Yet we faced unexpected challenges in analysis and interpretation as we hadn’t considered the implications of being so expansive ahead of time. This paper presents our lessons learned, analysis choices and plans for future iterations of the survey.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2201700
- PAR ID:
- 10504453
- Publisher / Repository:
- Conference for Research on Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT) 2023
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- survey demographics undergraduate, K–12 race and ethnicity gender
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Atlanta GA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
