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Performing arts computing environments have received little attention in the educational sphere; yet, they offer opportunities for learners to validate their efforts, ideas, and skills through showcasing their work in a public-facing performance. In this work, we explore an out-of-school dance and computing educational program run by the organization, STEM From Dance. The organizational mission is to create an equitable learning experience for young women of color to engage with computing while exposing them to STEM careers. Through an analysis of eleven interviews with youth participants, instructors, and the executive director, we examine how the social, cultural, and political dimensions of the learning environment facilitate identity work in computing and dance. Our findings point to three primary activities used by the organization to promote equity: (1) providing psychological safety through a supportive community environment, (2) meaningfully engaging with learners’ social and cultural context through creative work with constructionist artifacts, and (3) actively promoting identity work as women of color in computing and STEM through both artifact work and community events. Applying the constructs of identity and psychological safety we explore the tensions and synergies of designing for equity in this performing arts and computing learning environment. We demonstrate how the seemingly contradictory elements of a high-stakes performance within a novice learning environment provides unique opportunities for supporting young women of color in computing, making them non-negotiable in the organization’s efforts to promote equity and inclusion. Our work illustrates how attending closely to the sociocultural dimensions in a constructionist learning environment provides lenses for navigating equity, identity work, and support for inclusive computing.

In our society, where technologies continue to act as a marginalizing force for various individuals and communities, makerspaces present unique opportunities for community-driven work that engages people with a variety of communal technologies, knowledge, and work practices. However, makerspaces grew out of largely exclusionary discourses, which continue to neglect non-dominant technology practices, knowledge bases, and communities. Despite these origins, research remains largely optimistic about the potential for makerspaces to provide equitable opportunities for those stereotypically excluded to engage, learn, and build with technologies. We mirror this optimism through our work examining how makerspaces might be positioned to address social inequities while supporting community growth and development. This paper traces the development of a social justice makerspace situated within a community of color in the United States. The work contributes a contextual analysis of the design of a makerspace explicitly positioned to forefront community voices and address issues of social inequities. We highlight community perspectives within our situated design process as we draw out the themes and tensions that arose. Applying a social justice framework from Dombrowski et al. (2016) and Lötter's (2011) to our findings we demonstrate how makerspaces can be positioned to address social inequities through: identifying, educating, and communicating about inequities; engaging in the distribution of resources and opportunities; and enabling capacity building at the individual and structural levels. We highlight how an asset-based orientation can position the makerspace to grow in effective ways to address community issues.

Purpose This paper aims to describe the design and user testing of GeoForge, a multiple-player digital learning experience for middle school that leverages virtual reality (VR) and individualized websites for learning concepts in planetary science. This paper investigates how specific instructional design choices and features of the technology fostered collaborative behaviors. Design/methodology/approach GeoForge was implemented in 3 middle school classrooms with a total of 220 students. Learners used GeoForge in class in groups of 3–4 to learn about planetary science. A mixed-methods approach examined collaboration using classroom observations, teacher interviews, student surveys and student artifacts. Using Jeong and Hmelo-Silver’s (2016) seven affordances of technology for collaborative learning, this paper identifies ways in which features of GeoForge supported collaborative behaviors. Findings Instructional design which combined VR and the digital science journal (DSJ) helped foster collaboration. Some collaborative behaviors were especially notable in classrooms that did not regularly practice these skills. Segmenting tasks in the DSJ, clarifying instructions to articulate ideas, showing other group members’ responses onscreen and enabling multiuser VR environments contributed to collaborative behaviors and a satisfying learning experience as observed and documented through multiple methods. Originality/value GeoForge successfully integrated VR and personalized websites in a classroom planetary science lesson, an approach which balanced instructional design and logistical challenges while creating opportunities for collaboration.

Fabricating objects from a player’s gameplay, for example, collectibles of valuable game items, or custom game controllers shaped from game objects, expands ways to engage with digital games. Researchers currently create such integrated fabrication games from scratch, which is time-consuming and misses the potential of integrating fabrication with the myriad existing games. Integrating fabrication with the real-time gameplay of existing games, however, is challenging without access to the source files. To address this challenge, we present a framework that uses on-screen visual content to integrate fabrication with existing digital games. To implement this framework, we built the FabO toolkit, in which (1) designers use the FabO designer interface to choose the gameplay moments for fabrication and tag the associated on-screen visual cues; (2) players then use the FabO player interface which monitors their gameplay, identifies these cues and auto-generates the fabrication files for the game objects. Results from our two user studies show that FabO supported in integrating fabrication with diverse games while augmenting players’ experience. We discuss insights from our studies on choosing suitable on-screen visual content and gameplay moments for seamless integration of fabrication.

Context is a critical consideration in CSCL research and design, yet difficult to delineate. Its definition can encompass aspects of the environment, the learners, the technology, and their histories and cultures. Depending on researchers’ theoretical perspectives and the focus of their study, different aspects of context are forefronted in the data collection and analysis, while others are given less importance. In this chapter, we offer a framework that conceptualizes context in terms of focal, immediate, and peripheral layers surrounding the object of study. We describe how the aspects contained within each layer of context differ depending on one’s theoretical orientation. To illustrate, we offer contrasting examples of CSCL research that approach context from a cognitive perspective and a sociocultural perspective. We end by outlining several areas for future research and highlight the importance of technological advances to keep pace with the theoretical conceptions of context in order to support the design of responsive CSCL environments. Ultimately, we argue that a full understanding of context leads to more robust and ecologically sound CSCL research and design.

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to foster collaborative science learning, but guidelines for designing in this medium are lacking. This work-in-progress paper explores this gap in the literature through analysis of GeoForge, a multiple-player VR/digital learning experience where users collaboratively explore planetary systems. A mixed-methods study at 3 middle schools used teacher interviews, student survey responses, and student work to examine how GeoForge encouraged information exchange and reflection within small student groups. Our findings indicate students shared ideas and resources, engaged in co-construction, and teachers recognized high student engagement throughout the experience.

Drawing from over 50 interviews with diverse individuals who identify as makers we explored ways that communities were shaped the physical or online structures they occupy and a shared understanding of behaviors within the community. We identified two key dimensions to maker communities --- fluid and structured, and --- regulated and unregulated. We looked at these dimensions and how they impacted collaboration and learning, and togetherness in various maker communities.

Teaching physical computing has become more prevalent in the past several decades as the maker movement has popularized microcontroller kits as a way to engage students in learning about and creating with technology. Depending on the design of the kit, students can be exposed to concepts in electronics, computer science and design of computational objects. We argue that the concepts students are exposed to depend on the modularity of the hardware and software tools. We define the level of modularity based on two interdependent characteristics: transparency and affordances for interaction. The transparency affects what is hidden or visible to the learner, while the affordances for interaction regulate how users manipulate and combine elements when constructing a computational artifact. Within this study, we examine the transparency and affordances for interaction of the physical computing hardware tools. Using our findings from this examination, we layout a framework that outlines spectrum of modularity that can be provided to facilitate learning with maker kits.

Assessment of students' conceptual knowledge is a difficult task in all fields including electrical engineering. Recently, electrical engineering assessments have tried to isolate various types of knowledge through expert reviewed and validated tests or concept inventories, which attempt to cover the foundational concepts within a particular domain. While these tests have been fundamental in uncovering how students understand important concepts within specialties, they are traditionally administered on a static 2D interface without providing the students with tangible examples to think with or about. We report on a qualitative laboratory study to understand how different tools can change the possibilities and limitations of thinking with circuits. Specifically, we administer two versions of an assessment targeting concepts in direct current (DC) circuits in which students talked through their reasoning. One version represents the circuits as conventional symbolic diagrams, and the other version represents the circuits using physical circuit components connected with wires and solder. The participants conveyed several misconceptions within both forms with an even spread across each assessment. However, students exhibited the misconception of sequential reasoning more prevalently in the physical circuit assessment than the diagram assessment.

Building physical computing projects can enable learners to integrate computing into a range of interests and disciplines. However, the electronic portion of these projects can be difficult. Students are learning new concepts as well as how to work with new tools. This influx of information can be difficult for students to retain in their working memory as they construct their circuits. In this paper, we introduce BitBlox, a set of modular, solderless Breadboards for prototyping circuits. BitBlox attempts to decrease the cognitive load on the user by reducing the complexity found in the standard Breadboard by bringing visibility to the underlying connections within its modules. We present a comparative classroom study integrating the Breadboard and BitBlox into two different high school classes. Our qualitative analysis focuses on student errors, strategies, and collaborative practices, highlighting important dynamics for designing hardware tools.

The MoveLab was an educational research intervention centering on a community of African American and Hispanic girls as they began to transform their self-concept in relation to computing and dance while creating technology enhanced dance performances. Students within underrepresented populations in computing often do not perceive the identity of a computer scientist as aligning with their interests or value system, leading to rejection of opportunities to participate within the discipline. To engage diverse populations in computing, we need to better understand how to support students in navigating conflicts between identities with computing and their personal interest and values. Using the construct of self-concept, we observed students in the workshop creating both congruence and dissension between their self-concept and computing. We found that creating multiple roles for participation, fostering a socially supportive community, and integrating student values within the curriculum led to students forming congruence between their self-concept and the disciplines of computing and dance.

Passive Haptic Learning (PHL) is the acquisition of sensorimotor skills without active attention to learning. One method is to "teach" motor skills using vibration cues delivered by a wearable, tactile interface while the user is focusing on another, primary task. We have created a system for Passive Haptic Learning of typing skills. In a study containing 16 participants, users demonstrated significantly reduced error typing a phrase in Braille after receiving passive instruction versus control (32.85% average decline in error vs. 2.73% increase in error). PHL users were also able to recognize and read more Braille letters from the phrase (72.5% vs. 22.4%). In a second study, containing 8 participants thus far, we passively teach the full Braille alphabet over four sessions. Typing error reductions in participants receiving PHL were more rapid and consistent, with 75% of PHL vs. 0% of control users reaching zero typing error. By the end of the study, PHL participants were also able to recognize and read 93.3% of all Braille alphabet letters. These results suggest that Passive Haptic instruction facilitated by wearable computers may be a feasible method of teaching Braille typing and reading.