Benefits Main | Advantages of Learning CS | Relevant Research | What to Teach | Success Stories | ||||||
Formal studies of computer science curricula are somewhat hard to come by. On the other hand, more informal "success stories" demonstrating effective classroom practices are easier to find: Students teaching Students:
Logo for Writing Video Games Interestingly, the students assigned to make the game scored the highest out of all the experimental groups on "Level 9" problems on the Rational Number Concept Test (see graph on the right). These problems represented the most conceptually-challenging problems on the exam, requiring students to convert "pictorial representations" of rational numbers to usual fractions (262). In fact, on one problem in this group, the game designers outscored the next high-scoring group by 20%; also, students in this group raised an average of 15% on the Boston Curriculum Reference Test after completing the unit. Such an extended programming activity also exposed the students to the intellectual pursuit of programming. While many of the elementary school programming activities in Logo are routine applications of geometric facts and simple algorithms, this more open activity allowed students to express their creativity through programming. This degree of creativity led to a variety of student games, and the students generally seemed more excited to participate (see part of one student's notes below). Unfortunately, not all aspects of the study worked out quite as well. Most notably, while the project exposed the game designers to fractions, the majority of their time was probably spent on creativity and devising algorithms rather than solving math problems. For this reason, direct curricular benefits of the program were mixed; for instance, the author notes that one student "did not deal with any fractions either in his written designs or his actual programming" (197). This observation suggests that while open assignments may make students more enthusiastic about programmers and supplement their general problem-solving skills, they are harder to control in terms of curricular content. Even so, the author found that in general "[l]earning programming through designing instructional software or educational games proved to be a successful avenue for young designers" (280); students in the study created remarkably complex programs that handled input and animation through their own design.
Supporting
Advanced Students with Programming: Supplementing Basic Instruction
with Programming
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Early
Acquisition of Computer Science ·
©2008 Justin Solomon and Peter Rusev
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