Tangible interaction and learning: the case for a hybrid approach

Horn, Michael; Crouser, R. Jordan; Bers, Marina Umaschi

doi:10.1007/s00779-011-0404-2

Cited by 228 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…The shape of the interlocking blocks and icons creates a physical syntax that prevents the creation of invalid programs. CHERP programs can be compiled in a matter of seconds with the press of a button (Bers and Horn 2010;Horn et al 2011).…”

Section: The Robotics Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences in kindergarteners’ robotics and programming achievement

Sullivan

Bers

2012

Int J Technol Des Educ

111

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Early childhood is a critical period for introducing girls to traditionally masculine fields of science and technology before more extreme gender stereotypes surface in later years. This study looks at the TangibleK Robotics Program in order to determine whether kindergarten boys and girls were equally successful in a series of building and programming tasks. The TangibleK Program consisted of a six lesson robotics and programming curriculum that was implemented in three different kindergarten classrooms (N = 53 students). Although previous research has found that males outperform females in robotics and programming related fields, it was hypothesized that the young age of participants and their limited cultural indoctrination regarding gender stereotypes would allow boys and girls to have equal success in this program. Although boys had a higher mean score than girls on more than half of the tasks, very few of these differences were statistically significant. Boys scored significantly higher than girls only in two areas: properly attaching robotic materials, and programming using Ifs. Overall, both boys and girls were able to successfully complete the program.

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Section: The Robotics Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender differences in kindergarteners’ robotics and programming achievement

Sullivan

Bers

2012

Int J Technol Des Educ

111

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“…Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) have arisen over the last years as an appealing way for learning and interacting with computing systems [5], [20]. There have been several studies on how to objectively evaluate the benefits of TUIs for learning purposes [28], [29].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Customizing smart environments: A tabletop approach

Pons

Catalá

Jaén

2015

AIS

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Abstract. Smart environments are becoming a reality in our society and the number of intelligent devices integrated in these spaces is increasing very rapidly. As the combination of intelligent elements will open a wide range of new opportunities to make our lives easier, final users should be provided with a simplified method of handling complex intelligent features. Specifying behavior in these environments can be difficult for non-experts, so that more efforts should be directed towards easing the customization tasks. This work presents an entirely visual rule editor based on dataflow expressions for interactive tabletops which allows behavior to be specified in smart environments. An experiment was carried out aimed at evaluating the usability of the editor in terms of non-programmers' understanding of the abstractions and concepts involved in the rule model, ease of use of the proposed visual interface and the suitability of the interaction mechanisms implemented in the editing tool. The study revealed that users with no previous programming experience were able to master the proposed rule model and editing tool for specifying behavior in the context of a smart home, even though some minor usability issues were detected.

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“…Blikstein and Wilensky (2009) showed that linking multiagent computer models with real-world phenomena by using sensors could enable undergraduate students to learn authentic scientific and engineering concepts and practices. Tangible programming languages such as AlgoBlock (Suzuki & Kato, 1995) and Tern (Horn & Jacob, 2007;Horn et al, 2011) have also been used to teach young children programming.…”

Section: Agent-based Visual Programming and Tangible Computation For Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Horn and colleagues developed Tern, in which users construct programs by arranging and organizing wooden blocks with computer-vision fiducials (black and white symbols), which are then scanned by a program to generate a Logo algorithm. Tern has been used effectively to teach young learners programming and robotics, both in informal and formal settings (Horn, Crouser & Bers, 2011;Horn & Jacob, 2007).…”

Section: Agent-based Visual Programming and Tangible Computation For Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While tangible and visual programming offer two different interactional modes of programming for the learner, Horn, Crouser & Bers (2011) have argued for introducing a hybrid approach in which learners (users) can elect to work either using tangible blocks, or by using a visual (graphical) programming interface, to generate the same algorithm. They found that such a hybrid approach was more advantageous than using either approach individually.…”

Section: Agent-based Visual Programming and Tangible Computation For Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Integrated STEM in Elementary Grades Using Distributed Agent-based Computation

Sengupta

Krishnan

Wright

2014

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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Abstract:We investigate how the integration of visual agent-based programming and computationally augmented physical structures can support curricular integration across STEM domains for elementary grade students. We introduce ViMAP-Tangible, a socio-technically distributed computational learning environment, which integrates ultrasonic sensors with the ViMAP visual programming language using a distributed computation infrastructure. In this paper, we report a study in which 3 rd and 4 th grade students used ViMAP-Tangible to engage in collaborative design-based activities in order to invent "drawing machines" for generating geometric shapes. The curricular activities integrate engineering practices such as user-centered design, mathematical reasoning about multiplication, rates and fractions, and physical science concepts central to learning Newtonian mechanics. We identify the key affordances of the learning environment and our pedagogical approach in terms of the relationship between the structural elements of students' physical constructions and computational models, and their learning outcomes, both in terms of computational thinking, and the domain-specific, mathematical and scientific knowledge that they began developing.

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Tangible interaction and learning: the case for a hybrid approach

Cited by 228 publications

References 22 publications

Gender differences in kindergarteners’ robotics and programming achievement

Gender differences in kindergarteners’ robotics and programming achievement

Customizing smart environments: A tabletop approach

Integrated STEM in Elementary Grades Using Distributed Agent-based Computation

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