Search

In this study, support for teaching data literacy in social studies is provided through the design of a pedagogical support system informed by participatory design sessions with both pre-service and in-service social studies teachers. It provides instruction on teaching and learning data literacy in social studies, examples of standards-based lesson plans, made-to-purpose data visualization tools and minimal manuals that put existing online tools in a social studies context. Based on case studies of eleven practicing teachers, this study provides insight into features of technology resources that social studies teachers find usable and useful for using data visualizations as part of standards- and inquiry-based social studies instruction, teaching critical analysis of data visualizations and helping students create data visualizations with online computing tools. The final result, though, is that few of our participating teachers have yet adopted the provided resources into their own classrooms, which highlights weaknesses of the technology acceptance model for describing teacher adoption.

The rapid integration of technology into our professional and personal lives has left many education systems ill-equipped to deal with the influx of people seeking computing education. To improve computing education, we are applying techniques that have been developed for other procedural fields. The present study applied such a technique, subgoal labeled worked examples, to explore whether it would improve programming instruction. The first two experiments, conducted in a laboratory, suggest that the intervention improves undergraduate learners' problem-solving performance and affects how learners approach problem-solving. The third experiment demonstrates that the intervention has similar, and perhaps stronger, effects in an online learning environment with in-service K-12 teachers who want to become qualified to teach computing courses. By implementing this subgoal intervention as a tool for educators to teach themselves and their students, education systems could improve computing education and better prepare learners for an increasingly technical world.

Georgia Computes! ("GaComputes") was a six-year (2006-2012) project to improve computing education across the state of Georgia in the United States, funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal of GaComputes was to broaden participation in computing and especially to engage more members of underrepresented groups which includes women, African Americans, and Hispanics. GaComputes' interventions were multi-faceted and broad: summer camps and after-school/weekend programs for 4th-12th grade students, professional development for secondary teachers, and professional development for post-secondary instructors faculty. All of the efforts were carefully evaluated by an external team (led by the third and fourth authors), which provides us with an unusually detailed view into a computing education intervention across a region (about 59K square miles, about 9.9 million residents). Our dataset includes evaluations from over 2,000 students who attended after-school or weekend workshops, over 500 secondary school teachers who attended professional development, 120 post-secondary teachers who attended professional development, and over 2,000 students who attended a summer day (non-residential) camp. GaComputes evaluations provide insight into details of interventions and into influences on student motivation and learning. In this article, we describe the results of these evaluations and describe how GaComputes broadened participation in computing in Georgia through both direct interventions and indirect support of other projects.

Why would individuals who are capable of learning opt not to? Learning is important for stability and success. It would seem rational that students in groups that are frequently underrepresented or marginalized would be motivated to learn. However, negotiation of multiple identities and self-beliefs can impact motivations to learn. For example, young African American males frequently adopt a "cool pose" in their approach to education. They maintain that they do not care and will not try to be a part of the existing educational system. To better understand these issues, we studied African American males in the Glitch Game Testers program. High school students in the Glitch program worked as paid game testers and took workshops in computer science. More than 65% of the participants went on to study computing after high school. We found that these students persisted with education and computing because they navigated around motivations to not learn by creating many different faces for their involvement with Glitch. In this article, we explore the use and design implications of face-saving tactics these young men used to "geek out" on computer programming, choose computer science for their career, and maintain their current identities with friends and families.

We present the results of an interview study investigating student experiences in two online introductory computer science courses. Our theoretical approach is situated at the intersection of two research traditions: "distance and adult education research," which tends to be sociologically oriented, and "computer science education research," which has strong connections with pedagogy and psychology. The article reviews contributions from both traditions on student failure in the context of higher education, distance and online education as well as introductory computer science. Our research relies on a combination of the two perspectives, which provides useful results for the field of computer science education in general, as well as its online or distance versions. The interviewed students exhibited great diversity in both socio-demographic and educational background. We identified no profiles that predicted student success or failure. At the same time, we found that expectations about programming resulted in challenges of time-management and communication. The time requirements of programming assignments were unpredictable, often disproportionate to expectations, and clashed with the external commitments of adult professionals. Too little communication was available to access adequate instructor help. On the basis of these findings, we suggest instructional design solutions for adult professionals studying introductory computer science education. (Contains 2 tables.)

Since 1998, we have been developing and researching CoWeb, a version of Wiki designed to support collaborative learning. In this article, we summarize our results of situating CoWeb across the academic landscape of Georgia Tech. In architecture, CoWeb enabled faculty to serve more students in a design-based course. In English composition, a comparison study demonstrated significant learning benefits without incurring disproportionate costs. Yet, situating CoWeb was not always successful. In many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classes, students actively resisted collaboration. From these studies, we conclude that the culture of the classroom and the discipline needs to be compatible with the medium for computer-supported collaborative learning to be effective. Finally, we demonstrate how collaboration can be designed into the culture. A new class on introductory computing was explicitly designed to take advantage of the collaborative possibilities that CoWeb affords. We report our findings of the success of this approach. We characterize this research as a scholarship of application. We demonstrate that this mode of scholarship is a viable mode of scholarship in the learning sciences. Unlike traditional scholarship of discovery, we are not solely concerned with discovering new knowledge. Instead, we support others in the application of a new technology to serve genuine and complex learning situations. By doing so, we seek to understand the potential that one new medium, a Wiki, has for supporting learning.

Describes CaMILE (Collaborative and Multimedia Interactive Learning Environment), an online forum for collaboration and reflection. Topics include project-based learning, collaborative domain-relevant student discussions, a model for understanding collaboration tool use, examples of using CaMILE in various university disciplines, and use of the World Wide Web. (Author/LRW)

Proposes the use of hypermedia to provide components of an apprenticeship learning model for students in which process and conceptual knowledge learning is integrated. Describes a model called Apprenticeship Based Learning Environment (ABLE) and discusses software design and scaffolding, an example of an ABLE. Contains 80 references. (Author/LRW)

Discusses cognitive apprenticeship, an educational practice that focuses on students actively engaged in activities with a variety of supports, or scaffolding. Presents a model of scaffolding that was implemented in courseware for learning computer graphics on the World Wide Web. An evaluation on the use of the courseware at Georgia Institute of Technology is reported. (LRW)

In this study, support for teaching data literacy in social studies is provided through the design of a pedagogical support system informed by participatory design sessions with both pre‐service and in‐service social studies teachers. It provides instruction on teaching and learning data literacy in social studies, examples of standards‐based lesson plans, made‐to‐purpose data visualization tools and minimal manuals that put existing online tools in a social studies context. Based on case studies of eleven practicing teachers, this study provides insight into features of technology resources that social studies teachers find usable and useful for using data visualizations as part of standards‐ and inquiry‐based social studies instruction, teaching critical analysis of data visualizations and helping students create data visualizations with online computing tools. The final result, though, is that few of our participating teachers have yet adopted the provided resources into their own classrooms, which highlights weaknesses of the technology acceptance model for describing teacher adoption. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Data literacy is an important part of social studies education in the United States.Most teachers do not teach data literacy as a part of social studies.Teachers may adopt technology to help them teach data literacy if they think it is useful and usable.What this paper adds Educational technology can help teachers learn about data literacy in social studies.Social studies teachers want simple tools that fit with their existing curricula, give them new project ideas and help students learn difficult concepts.Making tools useful and usable does not predict adoption; context plays a large role in a social studies teachers' adoption.Implications for practice and/or policy Designing purpose‐built tools for social studies teachers will encourage them to teach data literacy in their classes.Professional learning opportunities for teachers around data literacy should include opportunities for experimentation with tools.Teachers are not likely to use tools if they are not accompanied by lesson and project ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional introductory computer science (CS) courses have had little success engaging non-computer science majors. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, where introductory CS courses are a requirement for CS majors and nonmajors alike, two tailored introductory courses were introduced as an alternative to the traditional course. The results were encouraging: more nonmajors succeeded (completed and passed) in tailored courses than in the traditional course, students expressed fewer negative reactions to the course content, and many reported that they would be interested in taking another tailored CS course. The authors present findings from a pilot study of the three courses and briefly discuss some of the issues surrounding the tailored courses for nonmajors: programming, context, choice of language, and classroom culture. Index Terms--Classroom culture, computer science (CSL motivation, nonmajors, programming.

Learning computing with respect to the context of its use has been linked in previous reports to student motivation in introductory Computer Science (CS) courses. In this report, we consider the role of context in a second course. We present a case study of a CS2 data structures class that uses a media computation context. In this course, students learn data structures and object-oriented (OO) programming through a pervasive narrative about how real media professionals use data structures to model the real world and to construct the digital images, sounds, and animations with which the students are familiar in their daily lives. We found that context played a different role in a second course than in a first course. We found evidence that some students did not need context to appreciate computing, but we also found evidence that context can help students get engaged with the material that they otherwise do not find interesting. In particular, the narrative aspect of a context may help students in relating the elements of the course and may even help with learning.