On plugging "unplugged" into CS classes

Thies, Renate; Vahrenhold, Jan

doi:10.1145/2445196.2445303

Cited by 71 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…The results of the study corroborate the findings that using unplugged computing activities in classrooms can improve students' CT skills (e.g., Thies & Vahrenhold, 2013). Thus, computer programming may not be a requirement to teach CT skills to students.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…That is, some tasks can be more interesting for boys or girls (Izu et al, 2016). In fact, the gender role was not examined in detail in neither computer-based nor unplugged computing studies conducted to investigate the development of participants' CT skills (Brennan & Resnick, 2012;Burke, 2012;Carlisle et al, 2005;Cortina, 2015;Thies & Vahrenhold, 2013;Wohl, Porter, & Clinch, 2015). Therefore, there is still a need to understand the role of gender on the development CT skills.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developing Middle School Students’ Computational Thinking Skills Using Unplugged Computing Activities

Delal¹,

Öner²

2020

Informatics in Education

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This study investigated the role of using unplugged computing activities on developing computational thinking (CT) skills of 6th-grade students. The unplugged computing classroom activities were based on the Bebras challenge, an international contest that aims to promote CT and informatics among school students of all ages. Participants of the study were fifty-three 6thgrade students from two public middle schools in Istanbul. The unplugged computing activities involved the tasks with three different difficulty levels covering the CT processes found to be common in CT definitions in the literature. To evaluate students' CT skills, two equivalent tests were constructed from Bebras tasks considering the same parameters (difficulty levels and CT processes). The results showed that students' post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores. There were not any significant differences between students' scores in terms of gender, and there was no interaction effect between students' CT scores and their gender.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing Middle School Students’ Computational Thinking Skills Using Unplugged Computing Activities

Delal¹,

Öner²

2020

Informatics in Education

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“…Story Programming uses the idea of unplugged activities performed without a computer, but the actual activities in this project are different and relate to the stories in the book or stories students create. Unplugged activities are primarily used in K-12 [1,5,11,17,18], but this research study employs the idea of teaching computational thinking without a computer at the university level. Most alternatives for teaching introductory computer science courses in institutions focus on changing the curriculum in their introductory computer science classes to improve success and retention [9,16] and make topics covered more relevant and broader [15].…”

Section: Unplugged Computational Thinking Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Story Programming

Parham-Mocello

Ernst

Erwig

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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Story Programming is an approach for teaching complex computational and algorithmic thinking skills using simple stories anyone can relate to. One could learn these skills independent of a computer or with the use of a computer as a tool to interact with the computation in the tale. This research study examines the use of Story Programming before teaching coding in a computer science orientation course to determine if it is a viable alternative to the code-focused way of teaching the class in the past. We measure the viability of the Story Programming approach by evaluating student-success and learning outcomes, as well as student reactions to post-survey questions. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics ~ Computational thinking • Social and professional topics ~ Computer science education • Applied computing ~ Interactive learning environments

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“…since the playful character of these programs -which actually is what makes them so attractive in outreach -might deter students from realizing that there is a core science beneath-see, e.g., [12]. The main challenge in outreach thus appears to align the internal view we have on computer science with what we present to our prospective students when reaching out; whether we have to adopt what and how we are teaching or whether we update our outreach programs remains to be investigated-see, e.g., [13]. A good starting point would be to revisit Denning's Great Principles [6] from an educational perspective and to realize that teachers and (prospective) students do not alway look through the same "window into the knowledge space of computing" [6, p. 371] when in class.…”

Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the importance of being earnest

Vahrenhold

2012

Proceedings of the 7th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

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Despite an increasing number of success reports from several countries, establishing computer science as a subject worth full curriculum credit is one of the most frequently named goals in secondary computer science education. In my keynote address, I will first present a personal/national perspective on this issue and summarize challenges in research, recruitment, and curriculum design that have to be met before this goal can be reached in breadth. Following up on the anticipated success of our ambitions, I will then comment on some probably even more pressing challenges in research, assessment, and teacher training that we need to be prepared to face once computer science has eventually been established as a subject worth full curriculum credit.

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On plugging "unplugged" into CS classes

Cited by 71 publications

References 22 publications

Developing Middle School Students’ Computational Thinking Skills Using Unplugged Computing Activities

Developing Middle School Students’ Computational Thinking Skills Using Unplugged Computing Activities

Story Programming

On the importance of being earnest

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