6.Pardiñas AF, Holmans P, Pocklington AJ, et al; GERAD1 Consortium; CRESTAR Consortium. Common schizophrenia alleles are enriched in mutation-intolerant genes and in regions under strong background selection.

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Systematic endeavors to take computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) to scale in middle and high school classrooms are underway with curricula that emphasize the enactment of authentic CT skills, especially in the context of programming in block-based programming environments. There is, therefore, a growing need to measure students’ learning of CT in the context of programming and also support all learners through this process of learning computational problem solving. The goal of this research is to explore hypothesis-driven approaches that can be combined with data-driven ones to better interpret student actions and processes in log data captured from block-based programming environments with the goal of measuring and assessing students’ CT skills. Informed by past literature and based on our empirical work examining a dataset from the use of the Fairy Assessment in the Alice programming environment in middle schools, we present a framework that formalizes a process where a hypothesis-driven approach informed by Evidence-Centered Design effectively complements data-driven learning analytics in interpreting students’ programming process and assessing CT in block-based programming environments. We apply the framework to the design of Alice tasks for high school CS to be used for measuring CT during programming.

We are developing games to increase student learning and attitudes in introductory CS courses. Wu's Castle is a game where students program changes in loops and arrays in an interactive, visual way. The game provides immediate feedback and helps students visualize code execution in a safe environment. We compared the game to a traditional programming assignment in an introductory CS course. In our study, half of the students were randomly selected to play the learning game first and half to write a program first. Our results show that students who play our learning game first outperform those who write a program before playing the game. Students in the game-first group felt they spent less time on the assignments, and all students preferred the learning game over the program. These results suggest that games like Wu's Castle can help prepare students to create deeper, more robust understanding of computing concepts while improving their perceptions of computing homework assignments.

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