Wollok: reconciliando didáctica e industria en un lenguaje educativo para POO

Los cursos iniciales sobre programación, y en particular los que introducen programación orientada a objetos (POO), resultan dificultosos para muchos estudiantes como lo indica la literatura. Entre las múltiples propuestas que se proponen para resolver esta problemática para cursos universitarios, la mayoría utiliza herramientas diseñadas para profesionales sin contemplar la introducción de herramientas educativas. Por otro lado, las publicaciones que definen lenguajes de programación educativos resultan aún más escasas. Este trabajo presenta Wollok, un lenguaje de programación educativo para POO desarrollado por docentes de distintas universidades del conurbano bonaerense y de CABA en el marco de una propuesta pedagógica para la enseñanza inicial de la POO a comienzos del nivel terciario (o a fines del secundario), que pone el foco en la gradualidad para la introducción de los conceptos teóricos. Wollok permite definir objetos en forma completa con una sintaxis mínima sin necesidad de recurrir a los conceptos de clase o prototipado. Además, su sintaxis está pensada para simplificar la transición a lenguajes industriales como Java o JavaScript. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que el uso de un lenguaje de programación educativo puede resultar ventajoso en cursos universitarios iniciales, sin representar un obstáculo para el uso posterior de lenguajes industriales.Tema: Educación en Tecnología.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Narrative support for young game designers’ writing

Creating narrative-based computer games is a complex and challenging task. Narrative Threads is a suite of software tools designed to aid young people (aged 11-15) in creating their own narrative-based games as a writing development activity. A participatory design process highlighted the areas where additional support was required, and informed the iterative design of Narrative Threads. The tools are implemented as a plugin to a commercial game creation toolset, and constitute character and object design tools, a branching narrative diagramming tool and an augmented story map view. In this paper, we provide an overview of the design of the tools and describe an evaluation carried out with 14 children over a four-day workshop. The study examined tool usage patterns, and compared games created with Narrative Threads to those created using the standard toolset. The results suggest a number of ways in which dynamic external representations of story elements can support writing activities in narrative-based game creation. Young designers using Narrative Threads wrote more character dialogue, made stronger links between the conversations they wrote and wider game events, and designed more complex characters, compared to those using the standard toolset. In addition to showing how Narrative Threads can support young games designers, the results have broader implications for anyone looking to support storytelling and writing through game creation activities and tools

Wollok: reconciliando didáctica e industria en un lenguaje educativo para POO

Los cursos iniciales sobre programación, y en particular los que introducen programación orientada a objetos (POO), resultan dificultosos para muchos estudiantes como lo indica la literatura. Entre las múltiples propuestas que se proponen para resolver esta problemática para cursos universitarios, la mayoría utiliza herramientas diseñadas para profesionales sin contemplar la introducción de herramientas educativas. Por otro lado, las publicaciones que definen lenguajes de programación educativos resultan aún más escasas. Este trabajo presenta Wollok, un lenguaje de programación educativo para POO desarrollado por docentes de distintas universidades del conurbano bonaerense y de CABA en el marco de una propuesta pedagógica para la enseñanza inicial de la POO a comienzos del nivel terciario (o a fines del secundario), que pone el foco en la gradualidad para la introducción de los conceptos teóricos. Wollok permite definir objetos en forma completa con una sintaxis mínima sin necesidad de recurrir a los conceptos de clase o prototipado. Además, su sintaxis está pensada para simplificar la transición a lenguajes industriales como Java o JavaScript. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que el uso de un lenguaje de programación educativo puede resultar ventajoso en cursos universitarios iniciales, sin representar un obstáculo para el uso posterior de lenguajes industriales.Tema: Educación en Tecnología.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Wollok: reconciliando didáctica e industria en un lenguaje educativo para POO

Los cursos iniciales sobre programación, y en particular los que introducen programación orientada a objetos (POO), resultan dificultosos para muchos estudiantes como lo indica la literatura. Entre las múltiples propuestas que se proponen para resolver esta problemática para cursos universitarios, la mayoría utiliza herramientas diseñadas para profesionales sin contemplar la introducción de herramientas educativas. Por otro lado, las publicaciones que definen lenguajes de programación educativos resultan aún más escasas. Este trabajo presenta Wollok, un lenguaje de programación educativo para POO desarrollado por docentes de distintas universidades del conurbano bonaerense y de CABA en el marco de una propuesta pedagógica para la enseñanza inicial de la POO a comienzos del nivel terciario (o a fines del secundario), que pone el foco en la gradualidad para la introducción de los conceptos teóricos. Wollok permite definir objetos en forma completa con una sintaxis mínima sin necesidad de recurrir a los conceptos de clase o prototipado. Además, su sintaxis está pensada para simplificar la transición a lenguajes industriales como Java o JavaScript. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que el uso de un lenguaje de programación educativo puede resultar ventajoso en cursos universitarios iniciales, sin representar un obstáculo para el uso posterior de lenguajes industriales.Tema: Educación en Tecnología.Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informátic

Novice programming environments: lowering the barriers, supporting the progression

In 2011, the author published an article that looked at the state of the art in novice programming environments. At the time, there had been an increase in the number of programming environments that were freely available for use by novice programmers, particularly children and young people. What was interesting was that they offered a relatively sophisticated set of development and support features within motivating and engaging environments, where programming could be seen as a means to a creative end, rather than an end in itself. Furthermore, these environments incorporated support for the social and collaborative aspects of learning. The article considered five environments—Scratch, Alice, Looking Glass, Greenfoot, and Flip— examining their characteristics and investigating the opportunities they might offer to educators and learners alike. It also considered the broader implications of such environments for both teaching and research. In this chapter, the author revisits the same five environments, looking at how they have changed in the intervening years. She considers their evolution in relation to changes in the field more broadly (e.g., an increased focus on “programming for all”) and reflects on the implications for teaching, as well as research and further development

A theoretical and practical approach to a persuasive agent model for change behaviour in oral care and hygiene

There is an increased use of the persuasive agent in behaviour change interventions due to the agent‘s features of sociable, reactive, autonomy, and proactive. However, many interventions have been unsuccessful, particularly in the domain of oral care. The psychological reactance has been identified as one of the major reasons for these unsuccessful behaviour change interventions. This study proposes a formal persuasive agent model that leads to psychological reactance reduction in order to achieve an improved behaviour change intervention in oral care and hygiene. Agent-based simulation methodology is adopted for the development of the proposed model. Evaluation of the model was conducted in two phases that include verification and validation. The verification process involves simulation trace and stability analysis. On the other hand, the validation was carried out using user-centred approach by developing an agent-based application based on belief-desire-intention architecture. This study contributes an agent model which is made up of interrelated cognitive and behavioural factors. Furthermore, the simulation traces provide some insights on the interactions among the identified factors in order to comprehend their roles in behaviour change intervention. The simulation result showed that as time increases, the psychological reactance decreases towards zero. Similarly, the model validation result showed that the percentage of respondents‘ who experienced psychological reactance towards behaviour change in oral care and hygiene was reduced from 100 percent to 3 percent. The contribution made in this thesis would enable agent application and behaviour change intervention designers to make scientific reasoning and predictions. Likewise, it provides a guideline for software designers on the development of agent-based applications that may not have psychological reactance

Computational thinking in programming tasks - An innovative analysis of a mathematics textbook

Master i grunnskolelærerutdanning 5-10, Matematikk 4 - 202

Development and Application of a Rasch Model Measure of Student Competency in University Introductory Computer Programming

University computer programming instruction nomenclature commonly uses the term Computer Science 1 (CS1) to describe introductory units of study. Success in CS1 is important as a pre-requisite for further study in programming and related disciplines. It is important to measure student progress and the antecedent influences. This study applied the Rasch Model and Messick’s Unified Theory of Validity to construct an interval level measure of CS1 competency with demonstrable suitability for this purpose

Narrative Threads: supporting young people in developing writing skills through narrative-based game creation

This thesis examines how narrative-based game creation can be used as an activity to improve writing skills for young people aged 11-15, and how additional representational support in a game creation tool can increase the benefits of the activity. Creating narrative-based games can involve traditional writing skills as well as requiring the 21st century skills of multimodal and interactive writing. Toolsets make it possible for young people to create 3D role-playing games with a commercial look and feel, but they do not provide support for the complex task of interactive and multimodal narrative creation. To investigate the desirable features of a tool that would support this task and the associated learning, an extensive learner-centred design process was conducted. This involved teachers and young people, and also incorporated relevant theory synthesised into a design model. A suite of tools, Narrative Threads, was designed and developed through an iterative process to provide the support highlighted as important. Two evaluative studies were conducted in different learning contexts; a secondary school and a vacation workshop. A mixed-methods approach was used to examine the overall potential for the activity to support writing skills development and the impact made by additional representational support. Comparative studies between groups showed some evidence that writing skills were improved for those taking part in game creation, and there were further benefits for groups using Narrative Threads in the workshop setting, but not in the school setting. Additionally, a multimodal analysis of the games created showed that many participants demonstrated a developing proficiency in using 3D graphical elements, text and sound to convey an interactive narrative. The findings indicate promise for the approach, although additional curricular and pedagogical support would be crucial if the potential is to be actualised in a classroom context