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This paper presents a game-design workshop built around a digital art installation featuring video games displayed over a real-world skyscraper to stimulate students' interest in computer science and a study testing its short-term effects on improving middle school students' computational thinking (CT) skills and attitudes towards computing. Following a STEAM approach, the workshop aimed to engage participants in age-appropriate activities that focus on CT skills through the lens of creating their own game. A web-based game design interface that allows students to code and play games as simulated on a skyscraper was developed to support the workshop's core activities. The web environment also featured step-by-step tutorials and fully functional games to promote the accessibility of the learning materials for a diverse body of students and educators around the globe. The results of the study indicated that the workshop helped students improve their CT skills and differentially influence their attitudes towards computing. In particular, the workshop experience led students from underserved community districts to lower their attitude ratings, whereas the reverse pattern was observed for students from more affluent districts. The workshop reportedly informed students' perception of computing as a profession and their appreciation of the analytical effort required for developing functional games. Qualitative analysis of artifact-based interviews indicated that students could begin to make abstractions and devise algorithms by associating variables through conditional statements while solving problems related to game development. Interview analysis also revealed that students took pride in the effort that they made during the workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this convergent mixed-methods study was to evaluate the effect of educational robotics on pre-service teachers' programming comprehension and motivation. Computer science is increasingly being integrated into K-8 curricula. However, a shortage of teachers trained to teach basic computer science concepts remains unresolved. This study thus utilized educational robotics as "mindtools" to teach programming concepts to pre-service teachers. Data were obtained through a pre-post comprehension assessment, a pre-post motivation survey, field notes, and individual interviews. The findings of this study indicated that pre-service teachers' comprehension of programming concepts and motivation related to programming can be improved through educational robotics to statistically significant levels. Design implications on integrating educational robotics into pre-service teacher programming instruction are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novice programmers, who have yet to form effective mental models of the domain, often experience high cognitive load, low confidence, and high anxiety, negatively affecting learning and retention rates. These cognitive and affective limitations pose an instructional challenge. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a whole-task instructional approach compared with a part-task instructional approach for novices learning to program from a cognitive and affective perspective. A fully randomized between-subjects controlled experiment was designed, including two online instructional conditions (whole-task vs. part-task). The whole-task condition followed the Task-Centered Instructional Strategy and included explicit instruction in the context of whole tasks. The part-task condition followed a part-task instructional strategy and included the same explicit instruction, yet in the context of objectives and topic-related tasks. Based on Bandura's triadic model (Bandura, Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory, Prentice-Hall, 1986), we propose a conceptual model, which we used to hypothesize that the Task-Centered Instructional Strategy may be more effective for novices learning to program. Sixty-five students with no programming experience volunteered to participate in the study and were randomly assigned to one of the conditions. Participants in the whole-task condition performed significantly better on the near and far transfer posttests. In accordance with our model, confidence and cognitive load during learning were found to be significant partial mediators of the effect of instructional strategy on performance. Overall, we found that the task-centered instructional strategy, combining explicit instruction with whole-tasks, is effective for addressing the cognitive and affective considerations relevant to novices in computer science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated how a computer science (CS) problem-based curriculum impacted elementary students' CS learning and attitudes. Four sixth-grade teachers and 200 of their students participated in the study. Researchers developed a CS curriculum in collaboration with the teachers, which consisted of two main units: (1) an introduction to block-based coding and (2) a problem-based learning (PBL) applied coding project. Overall, students significantly improved their knowledge of CT concepts after the introductory block-based coding lessons and retained that knowledge after completing the PBL activities approximately three months later. Results suggest that Event and Parallelism were challenging concepts for most of the students, whereas Loop and Sequence were easily grasped by most of the students. Further analysis based on prior knowledge levels revealed that the high-prior knowledge (HK) group outperformed the low-prior knowledge (LK) group on every measure. However, LK narrowed the gap of CT concepts after the introductory block-based coding lessons. Students also communicated relatively positive attitudes towards CS at the conclusion of the PBL unit. These results provide support for further exploring the integration of inquiry-oriented instructional strategies such as PBL to support CS instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]