Computational Thinking and Its Mathematics Origins through Purposeful Music Mixing with African American High School Students

Computational thinking (CT) is being advocated as core knowledge needed by all students—particularly, students from underrepresented groups—to prepare for the 21st century (Georgia Department of Education, 2017; Smith, 2016, 2017; The White House, 2017; Wing, 2006, 2014). The K–12 Computer Science Frameworks (2016), written by a national steering committee, defines CT as “the thought processes involved in expressing solutions as computational steps or algorithms that can be carried out by a computer” (p. 68). This project investigated current national introductory CT curricula and their related programming platforms used in high schools. In particular, the study documents the development, implementation, and quantitative outcomes of a purposeful introductory CT curriculum framed by an eclectic theoretical perspective (Stinson, 2009) that included culturally relevant pedagogy and critical play through a computational music remixing platform known as EarSketch. This purposeful introductory CT curriculum, designed toward engaging African American high school students, was implemented with a racially diverse set of high school students to quantitatively measure their engagement and CT content knowledge change. The goal of the project was to increase engagement and CT content knowledge of all student participants, acknowledging that what benefits African American students tends to benefit all students (Hilliard, 1992; Ladson-Billings, 2014). An analysis of the findings suggests that there was a significant increase in student cognitive engagement for racially diverse participants though not for the subset of African American students. Affective and conative engagement did not significantly change for racially diverse participants nor for the African American student subset. However, both the racially diverse set of students’ and their subset of African American students’ CT content knowledge significantly increased. As well, there was no significant difference between African American students and non-African American students post-survey engagement and CT content knowledge post-assessment means when adjusted for their pre-survey engagement and pre-assessment knowledge respectively. Hence, showing that purposeful music mixing using EarSketch designed toward African American students benefitted a racially diverse set of students in cognitive engagement and CT content knowledge and the African American subset of students in CT content knowledge. Implications and recommendations for further study are discussed

A Qualitative Study on Engaging Students in Computing Through Computational Remixing with EarSketch

Computer Science fields have a difficult time engaging underrepresented populations such as African Americans and women. EarSketch is an approach to engage these student through authentic STEAM learning involving computational music remixing. EarSketch has been used in several pilot studies. In this study, students from one pilot study participated in a focus group to understand the effectiveness of EarSketch in engaging underrepresented minorities. Qualitative analysis shows a variety of contributing factors in engagement such as motivation, confidence, identity, conceptualization, and creativity.Undergraduat

Code Beats - Teaching Computer Programming Coding via Hip Hop Beats

Computer programming is a crucial skill for future professionals, not only those working as computer programmers but most modern workers. To train the next generation, society has created many initiatives to introduce computer programming to young students. These initiatives range from classes in a formal academic setting to informal, extracurricular sessions in after-school and summer camps. Even with the increasing offer of these initiatives to expand the opportunities to learn computer programming, the interest in computer programming remains low, especially among populations underrepresented in computing. This lack of interest could be impacted by stereotypical views of computer programming as tedious and difficult to learn and the idea that programming is only for those with a geek gene. Therefore, introducing students to a different side of computer programming, such as its ability to make high-quality music in connection to the use of culturally relevant pedagogy, may be an essential tool in changing students’ perceptions of this field. To investigate this, this dissertation describes and evaluates my approach that introduces the foundational concepts of computer programming using music. First, it investigates prior work that has used music to teach programming. Next, it describes my approach and curriculum design, which combines programming with hip-hop music. Then, it analyzes my approach\u27s impact on attracting and engaging students in several contexts. Finally, it demonstrates how pedagogical approaches commonly used in computer science education can be adapted to this musical context without losing effectiveness. The results indicate that my approach attracts, motivates, and engages students in computer science, a promising step in the effort to broaden the appeal of computer science to increase diversity

A multiple case study of high school perspectives making music with code in Sonic Pi

The purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions of high school students who made music with code in Sonic Pi. This qualitative multiple case study focused on individuals in an extracurricular club at a public charter high school who volunteered to participate on-site and remotely asynchronously via Canvas learning management system. This study was guided by five research questions, including: (1) What musical ideas, if any, do participants report learning or demonstrate through making music with code in Sonic Pi? (2) How does making music with code impact participants’ perceptions of their music making? (3) How does making music with code impact participants’ perceptions of their ability to learn to make music? (4) How does making music with code impact participants’ interest in music courses? (5) How does making music with code impact participants’ interest in computer science courses? Participants completed research study materials, including a series of tutorials for Sonic Pi. Data included answers to questionnaires and surveys, multimedia artifacts including the source code and exported audio of participants’ music making, and interviews of participants that were codified and analyzed in two cycles, utilizing descriptive coding, values coding, and longitudinal coding. Participants’ code and multimedia artifacts revealed a close alignment to the four properties of sound, including: pitch, duration, intensity/amplitude, and timbre. Participants’ artifacts revealed themes and demonstrated ideas extending beyond the four properties, including: form, non-traditional music notation, and randomization. Participants all agreed their coded artifacts are music. Additionally, participants’ varied responses about musicianship and composers suggests that making music is something anyone can engage in, regardless of how one identifies themself. All participants agreed that Sonic Pi is a useful tool for learning and understanding musical concepts and that Western staff notation is not required knowledge for making music. Participants’ interests in music or computer science courses were impacted by their prior experiences in music and/or coding. This study concludes with a discussion of themes based on the findings

BlockyTalky: A Physical and Distributed Computer Music Toolkit for Kids

NIME research realizes a vision of performance by means of computational expression, linking body and space to sound and imagery through eclectic forms of sensing and interaction. This vision could dramatically impact computer science education, simultaneously modernizing the field and drawing in diverse new participants. We describe our work creating a NIME-inspired computer music toolkit for kids called BlockyTalky; the toolkit enables users to create networks of sensing devices and synthesizers. We offer findings from our research on student learning through programming and performance. We conclude by suggesting a number of future directions for NIME researchers interested in education

Tangible Distributed Computer Music for Youth

Computer music research realizes a vision of performance by means of computational expression, linking body and space to sound and imagery through eclectic forms of sensing and interaction. This vision could dramatically impact computer science education, simultaneously modernizing the field and drawing in diverse new participants. In this article, we describe our work creating an interactive computer music toolkit for kids called BlockyTalky. This toolkit enables users to create networks of sensing devices and synthesizers, and to program the musical and interactive behaviors of these devices. We also describe our work with two middle school teachers to co-design and deploy a curriculum for 11- to 13-year-old students. We draw on work with these students to evidence how computer music can support learning about computer science concepts and change students’ perceptions of computing. We conclude by outlining some remaining questions around how computer music and computer science may best be linked to provide transformative educational experiences

Musical expertise as a scaffold for novice programming

textThis study addresses the role of musical expertise on novice computer programming. Engaging novices with computer programming is one of the great challenges of computer science education. Although there is extensive research focusing on constructionist approaches to programming education and creative entry points to programming, little research addresses the topic of how musical expertise informs an unstructured programming activity. To answer this question I focused on the role of participant talk during programming, patterns in participant programming, and evidence of computational thinking in participants’ final Scratch projects. For this interpretivist study, I worked with a dozen novice programmers from a variety of musical backgrounds: classical musicians, jazz musicians, composers, and non- musicians. Each participant worked on a free-form musical project in the Scratch programming environment. I collected data including participant talk, screen recordings of participant programming, and participants’ final Scratch projects. Overall, musical participants more readily took to the numeracy involved in programming music in Scratch. Also, musical participants were able to use musical concepts and techniques as jumping-off points for programming challenges. Considering my results by participant group, composers stood out in a number of ways: working the longest, testing their programs the most often, adding Scratch objects the slowest, v removing the most Scratch objects, creating projects of the greatest nested depth, and unanimous use of operators and random numbers. Non-musicians, on the other hand, worked for the shortest amount of time, added the fewest Scratch objects, and created projects of the lowest nested depth. In addition to adding to the body of research around chunking and tinkering, this study reinforces the importance of context and comfort in an introduction to computer programming. Composition may be an especially rich area to leverage, given the design- like programming activity of the composers here. Future research projects could resemble this one while focusing on younger learners, explicit musical concepts like those invoked by participants, or alternative performing arts framings such as theater or dance.Curriculum and Instructio

Computer Science at Community Colleges: Attitudes and Trends

This study aimed to understand the identity and attitude of students enrolled in computer science (CS) or programming-related course at community colleges nationwide. This study quantitatively evaluation data for estimating the relationships between students’ identity and attitudes toward computer science with prior programming experience and other demographic factors. I distributed the survey to community college faculty of computer science programs nationwide. Questions for this study were adapted from the Computing Attitude Survey developed by Weibe, Williams, Yang, & Miller (2003). Using two robust quantitative statistical methodologies, I investigated the correlations and predictability of previous programming experience, gender, race, and age with participants\u27 attitudes toward computer science. This study drew its inspiration from prior works of Dorn and Tew (2015) and Chen, Haduong, Brennan, Sonnert, and Sadler (2018), whose studies looked at previous experiences in programming with a favorable attitude toward computer science. The primary independent variable was a students’ prior programming experience. Under evaluation, the dependent variables were students\u27 programming experience and demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and age. This investigation showed a significant association between programming experience and attitude toward computer science. Among the demographic variables evaluated, students\u27 racial identity was the only factor found highly correlated with attitudes toward computer science. Future work will consider the association between participants\u27 accumulated college credit hours and specific programming language effects on computer science attitudes

Κατηγοριοποίηση και περιληπτικές αποδόσεις εργασιών συνεδρίων της ACM SIGCSE

Η παρούσα εργασία αφορά στη μελέτη εργασιών οι οποίες παρουσιάστηκαν στο συνέδριο ACM SIGCSE τις χρονιές 2016, 2017 και 2018. Αρχικά, γίνεται μια κατηγοριοποίηση, με βάση τον κύριο τομέα της Εκπαίδευσης της Πληροφορικής τον οποίο αφορά η κάθε εργασία που παρουσιάστηκε στα προαναφερθέντα συνέδρια. Οι κατηγορίες στις οποίες κατατάχθηκαν τα άρθρα είναι οι εξής: • Αξιολόγηση σπουδαστών • Ασφάλεια και προστασία της ιδιωτικής ζωής • Διαδραστικά περιβάλλοντα μάθησης • Διαφορετικότητα των φύλων/ Πολυπολιτισμικότητα • Εκπαίδευση της Μηχανικής Λογισμικού • Εισαγωγή στην Πληροφορική • Εκπαίδευση της Πληροφορικής • Ενσωμάτωση Πληροφορίας • Ηλεκτρονική μάθηση • Οπτικοποίηση • Πρότυπα αναλυτικά προγράμματα • Πρωτοβάθμια και Δευτεροβάθμια Εκπαίδευση • Συνεργατική Μάθηση • Συστήματα διαχείρισης μάθησης • Υπολογιστική Σκέψη • Υπολογιστικός Αλφαβητισμός Στη συνέχεια, δίνονται περιληπτικές αποδόσεις των εργασιών της χρονιάς 2017 που εμπίπτουν στις παρακάτω επιλεγμένες κατηγορίες: • Αξιολόγηση φοιτητών/μαθητών • Εισαγωγή στην Πληροφορική • Εκπαίδευση της Πληροφορικής • Πρωτοβάθμια και Δευτεροβάθμια Εκπαίδευση • Συνεργατική Μάθηση • Υπολογιστική ΣκέψηThis thesis focuses on the study of papers presented at the ACM SIGCSE conference in the years 2016, 2017 and 2018. Initially, a categorization is defined, based on the main areas of IT education that are included in the aforementioned conferences. The categories in which the articles were classified are: • Student evaluation • Security and Privacy • Interactive learning environments • Gender Diversity / Multiculturalism • Software engineering education • CS1 • Computer Science Education • Integration of Information • E-learning • Visualization • Model curricula • K-12 • Collaborative learning • Computational Thinking • Computing Literacy Afterwards, reviews of the papers of the year 2017 are presented concerning the following categories: • Student evaluation • CS1 • Computer Science Education • K-12 • Collaborative learning • Computational Thinkin

MuSciQ- A Musical Curriculum for Math

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Music and math are related in that 1) they both rely on the basic understanding of numbers, proportions, intervals, measurements, and operations and 2) both require levels of abstract thinking and symbolic notation. Studies link music and math by examining, for example, how music may play a role in math performance. There are, however, few studies that examine how a musical curriculum may impact not only math performance, but math related variables including math anxiety, math self-efficacy, and math motivation. This study sought to develop and assess the feasibility of MuSciQ, a music technology-based curriculum, and explore how it might impact math anxiety, math selfefficacy, math motivation, and math performance in twelve fourth-grade students. Additionally, acceptability of the MuSciQ curriculum was assessed by students, a teacher, and a school administrator by using the Technology Acceptance Model. Participants experienced large, significant improvements in math anxiety scores and significant improvement in math motivation. Math performance and self-efficacy showed small, non-significant improvements. When split by gender, only math anxiety scores showed statistically significant improvement in males. As expected, there was a significant positive correlation between motivation and self-efficacy before and after the curriculum was introduced. There was also a significant positive correlation between technology acceptance and motivation. Surprisingly, although there were significant positive correlations between the pre- anxiety and motivation measures, there were no significant correlations after the curriculum was introduced. There were no significant correlations found between anxiety and technology acceptance. There was, however, a significant correlation between technology acceptance and self-efficacy. Technology acceptance and additional qualitative comments provided by students and administrators suggest MuSciQ is an easy and useful platform to promote music and math learning. These findings point to a need for further investigation into the influence of MuSciQ on math related variables