{"title":"Towards a learning progression of sequencing and algorithm design for five- and six-years-old children engaging with an educational robot","authors":"Camilo Vieira, J. Chiu, B. Velasquez","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2255058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2255058","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTBackground and Context Computational thinking (CT) is a fundamental skill and a new form of literacy that everyone should develop to participate in civic society. Sequencing and algorithmic thinking are at the core of CT. This study looked into how young children enrolled in a kindergarten in Colombia develop CT skills.Objective This paper aims to develop a learning progression of sequencing and algorithm design for early childhood. This goal is complemented by identifying the challenges children face to advance into more sophisticated approaches to problem-solving using algorithmic thinking.Method Fourteen five- and six-year-old students participated in this study. These children participated in unplugged learning activities, and solved two sets challenges with the BeeBot. We used a grounded theory approach to analyze how they solved these algorithmic thinking activities and the challenges they faced in this process.Findings Our results suggest four increasingly sophisticated approaches to solving these activities: step-by-step, simple decomposition, advanced decomposition, and full algorithm design. We also found different challenges students faced when working on these activities. These challenges can relate to critical cognitive skills.Implications These results will enable educators to support student learning about CT. These results also open new questions about the relationship between cognitive skills and CT activities in early childhood.KEYWORDS: Computational thinkingearly childhoodlearning progressionsequencingalgorithmic thinkingvisuospatial skills AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank Mariana Arboleda, Gabriela de la Rosa, Roxana Quintero, Britny Velasquez, Gisella Jassir, and Angélica Carrasquilla for all the data collection support.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the Fulbright Colombia and Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation at theUniversity of Virginia.","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136012941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Amanda Peel, Sugat Dabholkar, Gabriella Anton, Mike Horn, Uri Wilensky
{"title":"Characterizing changes in teacher practice and values through co-design and implementation of computational thinking integrated biology units","authors":"Amanda Peel, Sugat Dabholkar, Gabriella Anton, Mike Horn, Uri Wilensky","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2265763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2265763","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTBackground and Context To better reflect the computational nature of STEM disciplines and deepen learning of science content computational thinking (CT) should be integrated in science curricula. Teachers have a critical role in supporting effective student learning with CT integrated curricula in classroom settings.Objective Our team worked with high school teachers to co-design and implement CT-integrated biology units.Method We use a model of professional growth and qualitative case studies to characterize changes in teacher practice and values through their involvement in co-design and implementation of a CT-integrated biology unit.Findings Teachers followed similar pathways of professional growth, but their participation and perceptions varied, resulting in three dimensions: 1) participation during design, 2) participation in co-design during implementation, and 3) perception of CT benefits related to student learning.Implications It is important to support teacher comfort and engagement in the co-design process in order to better facilitate professional growth and CT integration.KEYWORDS: Computational thinkingprofessional growthco-designsecondary teachersprofessional developmentin-service teachers AcknowledgmentsThis work was made possible through generous support from the National Science Foundation (grants DRL-1640201 and DRL-1842374) and the Spencer Foundation (Award #201600069). Any opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy–Weinberg_principle2. https://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/making-fittest-natural-selection-and-adaptationAdditional informationFundingThis work was supported by the National Science Foundation [DRL-1640201 and DRL-1842374]; Spencer Foundation [201600069].","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134975708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jamie Colwell, Amy Hutchison, Kristie Gutierrez, Jeff Offutt, Anya Evmenova
{"title":"Elementary teachers’ experiences in online professional development for literacy-focused computer science instruction for all learners","authors":"Jamie Colwell, Amy Hutchison, Kristie Gutierrez, Jeff Offutt, Anya Evmenova","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2263831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2263831","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTBackground & Context This research focused on an online professional development (PD), the Inclusive Computer Science Model of PD, to support integrating computer science and computational thinking for all learners into K-5 literacy instruction.Objective This research was conducted to understand elementary teachers’ perceptions of the PD.Method We used a qualitative case study methodology to collect multiple sources of perception-focused data from 10 purposefully selected participants in the PD and used a general inductive approach to data analysis.Findings Three themes emerged that focus on teachers’ perceptions, with multiple considerations for how teachers viewed the concept of computer science, the potential for students with disabilities to participate in computer science instruction, and how they considered UDL in this instructionImplications Findings have implications for the potential of computer science integration into elementary literacy instruction and how teachers may independently use computer science instruction that supports all learners in their future teaching.KEYWORDS: Computer sciencecomputational thinkingliteracyelementary instructionprofessional development Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Award 1837380.","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135829403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Impact of reflection in auto-graders: an empirical study of novice coders","authors":"Fatima Abu Deeb, Timothy Hickey","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2262877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2262877","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTBackground and Context Auto-graders are praised by novice students learning to program, as they provide them with automatic feedback about their problem-solving process. However, some students often make random changes when they have errors in their code, without engaging in deliberate thinking about the cause of the error.Objective To investigate whether requiring students using an auto-grading system to reflect on the errors in their code would reduce trial and error behavior often seen in such systems.Method The paper analyzes the impact of reflection per student and per problem using paired t-tests.Findings Students took fewer steps to solve the problem in reflective sessions than in Usual Debugging Sessions (4.33 vs 8.04) and they made half as many syntax errors, logic errors, and runtime errors. However, they took more time between runs.Implications This paper provides evidence that requiring reflection in autograding systems can improve student debugging skills.KEYWORDS: Reflective debuggingintroductory programming classesonline IDEactionable learning analyticsauto gradersnovice programming Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Ethical approvalThis study was done in accordance with the university IRB with reference #15041.Data availability statementThe datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24188010","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":"82 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135538425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coding attitudes of fourth-grade latinx students during distance learning","authors":"Leiny Garcia, M. Parker, M. Warschauer","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2237366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2237366","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46007788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jasmine H Francis, William Foulsham, Julia Canestraro, James J Harding, Eli L Diamond, Alexander Drilon, David H Abramson
{"title":"Mitogen-Activated Pathway Kinase Inhibitor-Associated Retinopathy: Do Features Differ with Upstream versus Downstream Inhibition?","authors":"Jasmine H Francis, William Foulsham, Julia Canestraro, James J Harding, Eli L Diamond, Alexander Drilon, David H Abramson","doi":"10.1159/000529127","DOIUrl":"10.1159/000529127","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Many cancers have derangement of the mitogen-activated pathway kinase (MAPK), making this pathway blockade a therapeutic target. However, inhibitors of MAPK can result in adverse effects including retinopathy. This study compares clinical and morphological characteristics of serous retinal disturbances in patients taking agents with variable inhibition of MAPK: either direct interference of mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) or extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) inhibitors or with indirect inhibition via interference with FGFR signaling.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This retrospective observational study of prospectively collected pooled data is from a single tertiary oncology referral center. Of 339 patients receiving MAPK inhibitors (171, 107, and 61 on FGFR, MEK, and ERK inhibitors, respectively) for treatment of metastatic cancer, this study included 128 eyes of 65 patients with evidence of retinopathy confirmed by optical coherence tomography (OCT). The main outcome was characteristics of treatment-emergent choroid/retinal OCT abnormalities as compared to baseline OCT.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In all patients on one of three drug classes (FGFRi, MEKi, ERKi), the retinopathy manifested as subretinal fluid foci that were bilateral, fovea involving, and reversible without intervention. There were notable differences between the three classes of drugs: the proportion of patients with retinopathy, number of fluid foci per eye, proportion of eyes with intraretinal edema, and the proportion of symptomatic patients was least for the upstream target (FGFR inhibitors) and greatest for the downstream targets (MEK or ERK inhibitors).</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>This study shows MAPK pathway inhibitors may cause subretinal fluid foci with unique clinical and morphological characteristics depending on the target (FGFR, MEK, or ERK) implicated. Retinopathy is more common, more symptomatic, and more severe (more fluid foci, more expansive fluid configurations) the further downstream the MAPK pathway is inhibited.</p>","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":"1 1","pages":"25-31"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10821790/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74904354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How do students feel and collaborate during programming activities in the productive failure paradigm?","authors":"Zachary M. Savelson, Kasia Muldner","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2237365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2237365","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44325229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Design and use of domain-specific programming platforms: interdisciplinary computational thinking with EarSketch and TunePad","authors":"Christopher Petrie","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2240657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2240657","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42971909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Brian Dorn, Jan Vahrenhold","doi":"10.1080/08993408.2023.2251331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2251331","url":null,"abstract":"This issue of Computer Science Education is themed around collaboration. With technological advances bringing remote collaboration to K-12 classrooms and higher education on a broad scale, educators and researchers face new challenges and questions. The six papers in this issue address quite different aspects, and we hope that you will enjoy these perspectives just as we did. Schulz, Berndt, and Hawlitschek open this issue with a qualitative study on how educators and learners experience teamwork in teaching and learning arrangements. In their article Exploring students’ and lecturers’ views on collaboration and cooperation in computer science courses – a qualitative analysis, they present results of their analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews with participants from three German universities. Findings include that most students preferred teamwork, and the few risks they mentioned were related to different levels of skills and engagement within a team. Instructors, on the other hand, were concerned about the effectiveness of students’ learning of technical content and about assessing teamwork, an indicator that research results and best practices regarding collaborative learning have not been as widely received as one might hope for. Some criticism raised by students addressed lower levels of support from instructors than was considered to be needed and technical problems with tools. With respect to this latter point, we note that this study was conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so teaching and learning environments may have changed since then. It will be interesting to compare this snapshot to lived experiences during and after this disruption. Starting with a focus on young learners, the second article in this issue, Developing computational thinking collaboratively: the nexus of computational practices within small groups by Huang and Parker investigates collaborative learning in a middle school context. In their qualitative analysis of video observations, the authors study how middle school students engage with activities aimed at fostering Computational Thinking over the course of a five-week curriculum. Their work was driven by the observation that Computational Thinking practices and collaborative learning align well and, thus, several activities from the Creative Computing curriculum were adapted to leverage this connection. This study indicates that individual students can indeed acquire Computational Thinking practices when working in small groups; this can be seen as a response to one of the concerns documented in Schulz et al.’s article discussed above. Huang and Parker also provide vignettes documenting middle schoolers’ leveraging Computational Thinking practices while developing a solution to a given task as well as while testing and debugging their solution. These vignettes can serve as points of reference for future studies in this emerging area of research. Moving on to higher education, the work of H","PeriodicalId":45844,"journal":{"name":"Computer Science Education","volume":"33 1","pages":"315 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47296727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}