“I Broke Your Game!”: critique among middle schoolers designing computer games about climate change

Abstract

Background: There have been increasing calls for integrating computational thinking and computing into school science, mathematics, and engineering classrooms. The learning goals of the curriculum in this study included learning about both computational thinking and climate science. Including computer science in science classrooms also means a shift in the focus on design and creation of artifacts and attendant practices. One such design practice, widespread in the design and arts fields, is critique. This paper explores the role of critique in two urban, heterogenous 8th grade science classrooms in which students engaged in creating computer games on the topic of climate systems and climate change. It explores and compares how practices of critique resulted from curricular decisions to (i) scaffold intentional critique sessions for student game designers and (ii) allow for spontaneous feedback as students interacted with each other and their games during the process of game creation. Results: Although we designed formal opportunities for critique, the participatory dimension of the project meant that students were free to critique each other's games at any time during the building process and did so voluntarily. Data indicate that students focused much more on the game play dimension of the design than the science, particularly in those critique sessions that were student-initiated. Despite the de-emphasis on science in spontaneous critiques, students still focused on several dimensions of computational thinking, considering user experience, troubleshooting, modeling, and elegance of solutions. Conclusions: Students making games about science topics should have opportunities for both formal and spontaneous critiques. Spontaneous critiques allow for students to be authorities of knowledge and to determine what is acceptable and what is not. However, formal, teacher-designed critiques may be necessary for students to focus on science as part of the critique. Furthermore, one of the benefits to critiquing others was that students were able to see what others had done, how they had set up their games, the content they included, and how they had programmed certain features. Lastly, critiques can help facilitate iteration as students work to improve their games.

On Computational Thinking and STEM Education

“…Recent efforts in this direction involve more in specific integration designs and/or empirical follow-up studies (e.g., Fennell et al 2020;Lee et al 2020;Tucker-Raymond et al 2019). For example, in the special issue of Journal of Science Education and Technology, researchers reported particular strategies taken to make connections between existing STEM subjects in pre-college education and CT, CT-integrated disciplines such as computational sciences (Lee et al 2020).…”

Developing Eighth-Grade Students’ Computational Thinking with Critical Reflection

“…The first and most popular is student-centered learning. Motivated by constructionism [16], researchers have used the design-based learning strategy to develop CT in eighth-grade students [17]. Students self-explored the applications of CT by engaging in multiple cycles of design, evaluation, and redesign to make computer games about science topics iteratively in a programming environment.…”

“…Thirteen examples of how to create a digital work using Small Basic were also provided to the students for reference (as listed in Table 2). In this study, the students in the control group followed the teacher's original teaching plan, which was designed as suggested in literature: (1) computational experience was essential [3,10,12]; (2) collaborating with others was allowed [9,15]; and (3) iterative design was considered [17,18]. In each lesson, the teacher began by giving a representative example to illustrate new computational concepts, computational practices, and programming skills.…”

“…Motivated by the three-dimensional framework of CT and the learning theory of constructionism [9,16], the design-based learning approach has been frequently used for developing secondary school students' CT [10]. By engaging students in multiple cycles of design, evaluation, and redesign to create a digital work, this learning approach enables students to understand computational concepts and computational practices [17,18].…”

Green STEM to Improve Mathematics Proficiency: ESA Mission Space Lab

“…However, the dissemination of Green STEM in the academic ecosystem is an expanding tendency [66][67][68]. For instance, there are studies that deal with computational thinking and software development in the context of climate change [69], forest regeneration using remote sensing and intelligent seeds [70] or the relationship between photonics and green future [71], among others. However, above all this, lately, there is an increase in contests addressed to children or young students regarding STEM and Environmental awareness, such as Climate Detectives [72] or Astro Pi Challenge [73], either international (https://www.cstl.org/cleantech/the-challenge/, accessed on 24 August 2021), national (https://www.fundacionendesa.org/es/premiosinnovacion-educativa, accessed on 24 August 2021), or local (https://a21escolarab.es/, accessed on 24 August 2021), which promote social and ecological awareness through competitions.…”