#csk8

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into the paper, Dynamics of emotion, problem solving, and identity: Portraits of three girl coders with Maggie Dahn. She is an Associate Project Scientist at the University of California, Irvine working with the Connected Learning Lab and Creativity Labs. Maggie has a background in visual arts and engages in design research to study how people learn in different contexts and the affordances of art making for the development of voice and identity and issues of access and equity.

Research paper takeaways: Kids are feeling things and art making can be a tool for reflection on emotion and helps put young people in positions of power.

Context: An after school program for middle and high school students focused on creating a debugging culture through art and code.

Results: Creative reflection spaces like journaling, art making, and storytelling can open possibilities for learners to understand and examine the integration between problem solving, emotion and identity.

Takeaways for researchers:

Opening up the way you see how art can contribute to CS. See art as providing a way of thinking, seeing the world, and approaching problems. Art supports creating cultural and social connections and art making can create a sense of shared empathy. 

Takeaways for K-8 teachers and educators:

Look for opportunities to incorporate art, try it out and experiment. Think about how art can be multifaceted and used as a reflective tool to support development in CS. Think about how to support uncertainty and surprise. You don't always need to know the answer of the art making (or technology creating) activity before you start it. Consider how you can facilitate creating a calming environment for your students.

Resources:

Maggie Dahn

Art as a Point of Departure for Understanding Student Experience in Learning to Code (paper)

Debugging Failure: Youth Resilience in Computer Science (video)

The goal of this blog and podcast series is to bring CS education research into the K-8 classroom. In this episode, I take a deep dive into two papers: Designing an Assessment for Introductory Programming Concepts in Middle School Computer Science (2020) and Assessing Algorithmic & Computational Thinking in K-12: Lessons from a Middle School Classroom (2017) with Shuchi Grover. She is a learning scientist and computer science and STEM education researcher. Shuchi's research is primarily centered on computational thinking, CS education, and STEM learning in the PK-14 years with a focus on the design of curriculum, assessments, tools, and environments.

Research paper takeaways:

Designing an assessment:

“Without sufficient attention to thoughtful assessment, CT can have little hope of scaling in K-12.”

Context: Pre-post measure of intro programming CS course with 74 middle school students across three classrooms.

Results:

CS curriculum, teacher CS experience and expertise, and students’ background and academic preparation all impact student performance on an assessment.

Open-response items on an assessment help provide better evidence of student understanding than multiple-choice items alone.

A holistic measure of student learning and engagement comes about from using several forms of assessment and not just one assessment at the end of a course.

Assessing computational thinking:

“Desired outcomes for current CS initiatives include students’ conceptual growth and also affective measures such as identity development, motivation, and engagement"

Context: 28 students from 7th and 8th grade enrolled in a semester-long CS-related elective class.

Results:

The exam-based summative assessment included mostly multiple choice questions with a few open-ended questions. Benefits from this approach include scalability, objectivity, and ease of grading.

The challenges with this summative assessment method were issues with reliability of the question items when they included multiple CS concepts or did not take into account English language learner needs.

Even those students who did poorly on the exam-based assessment had high engagement with the final project and a basic understanding of the CS concepts.

Takeaways for Researchers:

What can we learn about learning from other fields that can be applied to CS education?

How can we use assessment to help determine what and how the CS standards should be laid out?

Pay more attention to formative assessment in CS. What sort of assessments work? Which sort of assessments surface misconceptions? Which assessments are good for formative, but not for summative and vice versa?

There's a lot we still have to learn about measuring computational thinking and programming skills as well as giving student feedback through automation.

Takeaways for K-8 Teachers/Administrators:

Formative assessment is important because it helps identify student misconceptions and provides a mechanism for giving feedback to students on their learning.

The goal of teaching and learning CS is not just to develop computing skills, but also interest and motivation.

When your goals are interest and motivation, identity development, and conceptual learning - you can't measure that with one instrument. You have to have a buffet of measures and probes.

You can use assessment as a form of curriculum design.

While more challenging to grade, open-ended projects help students make connections with their homes, their lives, their communities, and their cultures.

Assessment is a signal to the learner about what is important.

Resources:

Shuchi Grover

Measuring Student Learning in Introductory Block-Based Programming: Examining Misconceptions of Loops, Variables, and Boolean Logic (2017)

What We Can Learn About Student Learning From Open-Ended Programming Projects in Middle School Computer Science (2018)

Toward A Framework for Formative Assessment of Conceptual Learning in K-12 Computer Science Classrooms (2021)

Computer Science in K-12: An A to Z handbook on teaching programming (2020)

A brief introduction to evidence-centered design (ets.org)

K-12 CS Framework

CSTA 2020 Formative Assessment Session

The Charlottesville CS Community through a collaboration with the University of Virginia and Charlottesville City Schools makes a commitment to provide professional learning experiences and ongoing support for at least 42 K-8 teachers to help them infuse CS into their curriculum, serving 1000 students by Summer 2023.

In the summer of 2020, we launched the Creating Equitable CS Experiences Workshop with a cohort of 14 K-8 educators from Charlottesville City Schools. The workshop ran again in 2021 with a second cohort of 14 K-8 educators. We plan to run it again during the summer of 2022 with a third cohort of 14 K-8 educators from Charlottesville City Schools.

We infuse culturally responsive and equitable CS teaching practices throughout the workshop.

Many of the sample lessons we provide have been field-tested through our non-profit partners, Tech-Girls and C4K.

Each cohort of educators commits to remixing and/or creating two CS-infused lessons/units that they then incorporate into their curriculum in the coming year.

We track participant growth in self-efficacy toward computer science and equitable teaching strategies with pre and post-workshop surveys. We published preliminary results of our findings at SIGCSE2021 (Changes in K-8 Teacher Self-Efficacy with CS and Culturally Responsive Teaching through an RPP Workshop).

We also track implementation of the lesson plans/units and follow up with a survey and/or interview to determine what went well, what could be improved, and plans for continuing the lesson in the coming year.

The CS-infused lessons the teachers used are shared on the GoOpenVA repository as openly-licensed digital resources available to educators throughout Virginia and beyond.

The workshop is funded in part by an Advancing Computer Science Education (ACSE) grant from the Virginia Department of Education.

The PD is also available online for free through the CS Institute.

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a method of problem solving that starts with empathy. Projects infused with design thinking tap into students’ intrinsic motivation as they solve relevant, real-world problems. Along the way, students build up their skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and compassion. The role of the teacher during the project is to be a facilitator. Instead of dispensing knowledge, the teacher helps guide students through their own learning and often learn alongside them. Design thinking is a relatively recent phenomenon and there are several flavors to choose from including models from IDEO and the d.school at Stanford. The strategies below follow the DEEPdt process outlined by Mary Cantwell.

Step One: Discover

This is the stage of researching, asking questions, observing, and immersing yourself in your environment. You are looking for something that’s not quite right and finding a problem to work on that catches your eye.

What this looks like:

Observing Kindergarteners trying to find their way to a non-fiction book in the library and documenting the problems they encounter. (Solving library problems with design thinking)

Exploring a site where people with disabilities request custom video game controller mods.

Researching cerebral palsy and the everyday challenges it poses to the young people born with it. (Design thinking and robotics)

Interest mapping to discover where your passion intersects a problem you want to solve. (Are you too young to start something?)

Learning about problems local businesses and organizations want help solving. (SPARK Hackathon: Student-driven learning in the real world)

During this stage, you can also introduce students to the tools they will use for prototyping. One strategy to do this is inspired by Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall project. The idea is to get students hands-on with these tools and mostly let them figure out how they work through trial and error. You can provide some scaffolding in the form of challenges or basic setup instructions, but the students should mostly get a feel for what’s possible with the tools by playing around with them.

Step Two: Empathize

The next phase of the process is to empathize - to walk that mile in someone else’s shoes and then define a need they are facing. Exploring empathy means stepping outside your comfort zone and having difficult conversations. Those are hard to plan for and there may be failures of understanding and communication or in how an activity plays out. Here are 10 steps for discussing failure with kids.

What this looks like:

An empathy homework assignment for students, like spend 15 minutes doing a regular activity without the use of your arms. Afterwards, reflect on: 1) What was the most challenging thing to do? 2) How did you feel while you were doing this assignment? 3) What most surprised you about doing this assignment?

Completing an empathy map, in person, if you have the opportunity to interact one-on-one or based on a relevant video, podcast, or blog post.

Writing a need statement - a concise statement that describes a problem the person/population affected is facing along with the desired outcome while ensuring it does not focus on a specific solution.

Step Three: Experiment

The next phase of the process is to brainstorm, experiment, prototype and iterate. This is the stage where you really hand control of the project over to the students and this can often seem a bit chaotic and messy.

What this looks like:

Brainstorming sessions in which students are challenged to come up with a large number of ideas to solve the problem in a very short time period, eg. 20 ideas in 5 minutes. No idea is too crazy at this stage.

Introducing design constraints, eg. time, resources, scope of project and rubrics (if you have them).

Teams picking one solution to take to prototype stage by removing ideas that do not fit within design constraints, grouping the remaining ideas into overarching themes or ideas and ranking them based on how well you think they address the need statement.

Sketching a design and storyboarding idea.

Trying out different materials, testing often, getting feedback and ensuring everyone on the team is on the same page and can explain what they are working on and the process they have been through.

Recognizing frustration is a normal part of the learning process. (Failure, Frustration & Fearlessness)

Reflecting at the end of each work day - what did you accomplish, what are you going to work on next and what, if anything, if blocking your progress.

Step Four: Produce

The final step is to produce something, so that you can get feedback to make it better.

What this looks like:

Students in the hallway at UVA. trying out their ideas and asking for feedback from people they run into. (Bio-Med Tech-Girls)

Peer reviews to share I like… and I wish… feedback to each other.

Sharing prototypes with an authentic audience. (CS in Math Intensive Demo Party and SPARK! Hackathon)

Pitching projects to experts in the field. (Are you too young to start something? and Growing a CS Ecosystem)

Resources

More examples of Design Thinking in K-12

Design Thinking in Action (Baker-Butler Elementary School)

Design Thinking in Schools

Getting Started with Design Thinking (The LAUNCH Cycle)

K12 Network Lab Resource (d.school)

designschoolx.org

Empathy

Teaching Empathy Through Design Thinking

Design Thinking: Getting Started with Empathy

Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking

Activities

Design Challenge: The Perfect Chair

The CS Institute is changing in 2 big ways this year: First, it is going online. Because of all the unknowns around the COVID-19 pandemic, the decision was made in April to take CS Institute & Summer SPARK online. This opened up the opportunity to go from 2 days of intense work to a broader, 4-week experience starting July 6. We borrowed the idea of spreading out over several weeks from the MIT Learning Creative Learning PD.

Second, it is being planned in conjunction with an ACSE grant that is in place to provide CS education PD to K-8 educators from Charlottesville City Schools. In many ways, the mission of the ACSE grant overlaps with the mission of the CS Institute, so as much as possible we will align the experiences.

What is the CS Institute? The annual CS Institute is a collaboration between the SPARK! CS Program at St. Anne's-Belfield School, UVA School of Education and Dept. of Computer Science. This year Charlottesville City Schools and Computers4Kids have also joined as collaborators. The purpose of the CS Institute is to help K-12 educators from all disciplines learn about computer science and find ways to incorporate it into their teaching. Along the way, we will:

   Demystify computer science;

   Build a regional computer science education community;

   Increase access to CS for all students

What have previous attendees said about it?

The overall atmosphere was empowering and engaging!

I learned so much and am feeling so excited about new opportunities, thank you!

Great collaboration time!

Thank you for the students helpers who came to CSI and inspired and impressed us with all they are doing in CS!

Who should join? The CS Institute is open to anyone who wants to learn more about computer science and how to bring it into their K-12 spaces of teaching and learning - whether formal or informal. Now that it’s online and FREE, we look forward to this experience being an option for educators beyond our region.

What can you expect? Each week you will explore a different theme by watching video tutorials and doing hands-on activities at your own pace. There will be opportunities for community connection to meet with veteran CS educators, get peer support and share the learning experience. You will leave the CS Institute with CS-infused lessons customized to use in your classroom! You can also earn PD credit from UVA.

At last year's CS Institute, students were front and center sharing about the impact that having access to CS-infused projects and classes has made on them and being mentors. This year, student volunteers are now leading the efforts of our Summer SPARK experience and sharing their work will also be an important part of the CS Institute.

I just got back from the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE) Conference where computer science was a big topic. I have been involved with VSTE for many years and looking back I can see that in 2017 there were 5 CS-related sessions, in 2018 there were 11 and this year there were 21. I helped organize one of these sessions - the K-8 Computer Science Cohort Playdate. The K-8 CS Cohort is on a mission to integrate computer science into the curriculum. This group came together at the CS Institute this past summer and includes teachers and technology coordinators from public and private schools around the state. The group is being facilitated by Jennie Chiu of UVA Curry School of Education and myself. We’ve been sharing ideas, having playdates to try out different learning platforms and experimenting in our classrooms.

The cohort session facilitators included:

Jennie Chiu - UVA Curry School of Education

Kim Wilkens - St. Anne's-Belfield School

Jo Crowder - Albemarle County Public Schools

Goldy Purcell - Campbell County Public Schools

Karen Canfield - Campbell County Public Schools

Kim Arrington - Campbell County Public Schools

Anne Deane - Tandem Friends School

Michelle Dunphy - Prince Williams County Public Schools

During the session, we shared out examples of CS integration work we’ve been doing in elementary and middle school, before, during and after school. We also brought lots of fun CS-related learning platforms for participants to try out like micro:bit, Hummingbird robotics, Spheros, drones, Ozobots, Turing Tumble, BeeBots, Strawbees and Binary Bracelets.

Mark Sherriff, UVA CS professor, recommended SIGCSE to Zach and I as a great opportunity to tap into CS education at it’s best and he wasn’t wrong. It’s been awhile since I’ve been “just an attendee” at a conference and I must admit I really enjoyed the less stress, more learning opportunity feeling. For me the experience started off on just the right note with Gail Chapman’s keynote. She’s one of my CS edu heroines as a part of Exploring Computer Science. I share many hopes for the future of CS education and frustrations with its current reality with Gail. Here are some thoughts from her talk that resonated with me:

Learning is a uniquely personal experience. How we teach matters. Students need choice of the context, not just the interest of the teacher.

Tool after tool, language after language - what do I remember, I remember how to solve problems.

Rigor is often equated with harder code, teaching the same thing in a different language. It should be about solving problems.

Whether students build it or not, they need to engage in conversations about how tech is affecting their lives.

To date, CS has not been the great equalizer we hoped it would be. Providing new tools and not changing what we teach, just perpetuates inequities.

Make CS required and we think we’re done. It’s not enough to provide access, it’s about what happens in those classes, whose voices are we listening to.

We don’t have any idea of where CS will be in 20 years, not even 5 years.

Therefore, we continue to have a chicken & egg problem, how can you teach it well, if you don’t know what it is?

CSK8

A Literature Review through the Lens of Computer Science Learning Goals

This literature review compared CS learning goals that have been theorized as important vs. what is actually being done by students in K-8 classrooms.

Matched goals:

implementing code - natural language to coding language

evaluating solutions - efficiency

matching problems to solutions - identifying patterns & algorithms

code reading - interpreting

abstracting away details 

conditionals and flow of control

loops

variables, data structure & input

Unmatched goals:

designing solutions

using computational tools

matching problems to devices

To me the matched vs. unmatched goals could also relate to standalone CS vs. integrated/applied CS education. The unmatched goals are also the more open-ended ones that I think increase student engagement, but are more challenging to assess.

Arts Coding for Social Good: A Pilot Project for Middle-School Outreach

A group of students at Grinnell College wanted to explore whether introducing CS early to underrepresented students would increase their self-efficacy towards computing. They created a summer camp to explore this question. What they learned after their first year:

making tech camp more inclusive - offer early drop-off & late pick-up, low fee/subsidize, lunch & snacks included, all tools freely available

tech camp surprises? kids have opinions & want to share; some kids just want to code; rename code camp because it limits girls interest

CSDiversity

Diversity Barriers in K–12 Computer Science Education

What are some barriers?

learning curve, accessibility, structural change in school

interest in CS is correlated with teacher/parent recommendation, confidence & envisioning a job in CS

twice as many girls as boys say they are NOT AT ALL interested in studying CS

black & hispanic students are more likely to learn CS outside of the classroom in after-school clubs or groups

31% of girls say they NEVER see someone in the media doing CS who represents them

What are some barrier interventions:

move from lecture to active learning

culturally responsive teaching through POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning)

using browser-based computing tools is important for equity

ask students to reflect on their work & to give you feedback on which assignments resonate with them

There are many awesome resources shared in the TIDES: Teaching to Increase for Diversity & Equity in STEM presentation. Unfortunately this program is no longer running.

CS4All

Mitch Resnick, another CS edu hero of mine, shared the impact of Seymour Papert’s legacy on the work at the MIT Media Lab, Lego Education & beyond.

Interested in Class, but Not in the Hallway

What are the goals for #CS4All?

program implementation

teacher training

student tracking

longitudinal lens

student assessment

How student interest impacts CS edu?

interest is not a binary switch - situational interest (prompted by a place or environment) & individual interest (brought into environment by individual)

within there is triggered interest (engagement of a person with the domain) & sustained interest (ongoing, long-term seeking of activities over time)

move from triggered interest to more sustained individual interest

Designing and Developing A Modern K–12 CS Framework

#CS4All is at it’s heart, an education reform movement

why do I have to learn this (loops, conditions, fill-in-the blank standard)? the K-12 CS framework provides the answer

diversity is built into the framework

How to Plan & Run Effective Teacher Professional Development Finally on Saturday afternoon, I attended a train-the-trainer workshop facilitated by Barbara Ericsson (another CS heroine) & Ria Galanos (a new CS heroine). They provided a wealth of information in an easily digestible format. The timing couldn’t be better as we prepare to launch Learn to Learn IV: CS Institute this summer at STAB.

Okay, so I had given up on Tynker, but check this out. They now have a level editor that looks pretty sweet. You unlock more sprites as you level up, just like GSM. This seems to be a bit less of a freemium / pay 2 play model than the rest of the junk. Use Code.or to teach blocks based programming for free, GSM to teach game design, and this level editor as a sandbox. It seems more intuitive than Stencyl.