The Application of the Learning Sciences to the Design and Delivery of Student-Centered Learning Activities

The goal of this chapter is to provide a framework for creating student-centered learning activities that rest on a firm theoretical foundation and are based on a definition that highlights the actual learner abilities involved in successful student performance. To achieve this goal, it is important to establish a definition of student-centered learning that can be used to guide the selection of the important pedagogical elements that must be addressed in the design of student-centered learning activities. Having established these foundational elements, the chapter provides a framework for the design of case-based instruction that incorporates teaching and learning principles derived from theory and research in the learning sciences

Understanding computational thinking before programming: developing guidelines for the design of games to learn introductory programming through game-play

This paper outlines an innovative game-based approach to learning introductory programming that is grounded in the development of computational thinking at an abstract conceptual level, but also provides a direct contextual relationship between game-play and learning traditional introductory programming. The paper proposes a possible model for, and guidelines in support of, this games-based approach contextualized by an analysis of existing research into the issues of learning programming and game based learning approaches. Furthermore, the proposed game-based learning model focuses not only on procedural and applied knowledge and associated skills acquisition in computational thinking, but also provides contextualised theoretical knowledge on Computer Science concepts. By way of illustration, the authors introduce a game prototype currently being developed to combine a puzzle solving game-play that uses Computer Science concepts as the game elements