Maria Knobelsdorf, University of Dortmund, Germany - Didaktik der ...

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of answers management is important in practice. The question does not allow us to construct consequent questions straightforwardly with the same principle. Yet, after being reminded of binary system, students are able to realize the connection. They are doing almost the same as bisecting, only reversed. The value of these thoughts lay in the fact that they were driven mostly by students themselves. Disturbing (however expected) finding is low level of understanding of certain parts of mathematics among students. Logarithms are taught intensively, yet no (!) student have seen a direction to calculate the depth of a tree. Our guidance had to be very explicit. A few months later, most of the students actively knew that it is related to exponential growth and therefore also to logarithms. Some of the ideas encountered in the first module were needed again during the school year. More than a half of students (in both groups) recalled them actively. This includes bisection, decision trees, binary numeral system and efficiency modeled using some kind of elementary step. 5.2 Test results Further explanations and remarks are based on collected test sheets examination and our own notes from the lessons and consecutive discussions with students. We have not used any formal pre-test. It was more than clear from the initial discussions held for this purpose that students had difficulties to even understand the given questions. Student can get a certain amount of points for each task. Furhther given percentages indicate the average ratio of acquired points, illustrating the success on each task. Brief explanation. Students were to explain briefly the meaning of the term information. Any meaningful answer was rewarded with points. Definition or equally complete description got all the points, less precise expressions or examples got only partial score. The resulting success is lower than expected, given that it is a question of knowledge and outer resources were available. We see the reason in the lack of communication skills. Most of the students understood the term well, as we have seen during other tasks. To express it was however too difficult. Information and logarithm. This was a double task. First was to determine how many yes/no questions does one need to reliably identify a Czech deputy (they are 200). The second was to determine the minimal sufficient length for their hypothetical binary ID code. Very few students have used logarithm for any of the tasks. Majority of them chose to simulate the known process (sequential halving and doubling, respectively. Only two students have realized that the result is the same for both questions and the second calculation is not needed. Suboptimal decision tree. There was a small (7 leaves, 4 levels) decision tree with given rates per leaf. First task was to calculate the expected number of questions asked. The second was to lower that number by adjusting the tree.Those who made some calculations usually got both parts right. Less than a quarter of students (in both groups) passed the calculation, as it was still too mysterious for them. The bigger surprise is then that some of them understood the situation well enough 142 to optimize the tree (swapping frequent nodes towards the root). Inquiries comparison. Students were to sort seven given questions (such as “Is it a prime?”) according to the expected amount of information provided by the answers. All the questions were bound to the same situation, identifying an integer number between 0 and 255. This task was very dependent on mathematical skills, therefore the results are rather poor. Statements comparison. This last task was not included in the same test with the others. We put it into another test six months later. There were four different smiley-like crime suspect faces and four statements regarding the offender, such as “The offender has no hair”. The task was to sort these statements according to the amount of information included. Unlike with the previous task, here it was obvious enough that those who had a mistake in their resulted did not understand the matter at all. Hence we gave all the points or none. The success rates were unexpectedly high, considering the time passed. We can conclude that the educational results hold well. 6. CONCLUSION Based on the results above, we may conclude that students are capable of understanding the notion of information and its basic applications. The goals of the module were set surprisingly close to the real need. The limiting factors lay mostly in students mathematics skills. The teaching methods are found useful and efficient by the students, although they have recommended some tweaks, mostly in activities distribution in time. We described the concept of an introductory CS course for Czech grammar schools and gave more detailed specification about the module about information. Then we could proceed to the results obtained during the first testing year of the course. We intended to find out whether the module is feasible in the given constraints and conditions. The result shown here is that the proposed concept works, although it needs a few adjustments. The most distinctive feature of the proposed course is the shift in goals from CS itself to key competences and connections to other grammar school subjects. 7. REFERENCES [1] Framework Education Programme for Secondary General Education (Grammar Schools). Výzkumný ústav pedagogický v Praze, 2007. [2] M. R. Fellows, T. Bell, and I. Witten. Computer Science Unplugged... offline activities and games for all ages: Original Activities Book. Computer Science Unplugged, 1996. [3] J. Hromkovič and B. Steffen. Why teaching informatics in schools is as important as teaching mathematics and natural sciences. In Proceedings of ISSEP, ISSEP’11, pages 21–30, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011. Springer-Verlag. [4] D. Lessner. Computer science curriculum proposal for czech grammar schools. In Zborník príspevkov, ITAT 2011, pages 99–104, Seňa, Slovakia, 2011. PONT s. r. o. [5] A. Verno. Supporting k-12 computer science education. J. Comput. Sci. Coll., 23(3):145–146, jan 2008.
Data modeling and database systems as part of general education in CSE Claudia Strödter University of Jena Didactics of mathematics and computer science Ernst-Abbe-Platz 2 07743 Jena 0049/3641946202 claudia.stroedter@uni-jena.de ABSTRACT Everyday we unconsciously send queries and actions to databases. The used applications are part of school and working life and in specific areas of leisure. In order to teach a responsible handling with such applications it will be necessary that “data modeling and database systems” will be a part of computer science education. By analyzing selected teaching material it is investigated if and how it is possible to teach this topic as a general education. The study shows that it´s possible to teach general contents and processes with selected material. Furthermore, a first proposal for a grading of the topic “data modeling and database systems” reveals. Categories and Subject Descriptors K3.2 [Computers & Education]: Computer and Information Science Education – computer science education, information systems education. General Terms Documentation, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory, Standardization, Verification Keywords teaching in heterogeneous classes, education standards in lower secondary education, curricular aspects, didactical approaches, data modeling and database systems 1. MOTIVATION Computing systems have influence on several parts of our everyday life. Activities in our working life and in specific areas of leisure (e.g. credit card payment, shopping, seeing medical professionals) are supported by informatics applications. Unconsciously we initiate several procedures to read and process data and send queries to databases. Young people or students spend much time a day using the internet. In addition, they use smartphones, chip cards, and several vending machines. In sum, the handling of computing systems is an important element in young people’s life. Mostly, they are unaware of the associated informatics contents and processes. In order to ensure a responsible use of computing systems and personal data this knowledge should be a part of school education, especially of computer science education (CSE). Therefore, the CSTA K-12 Standards for Computer Science (CS) focus on the following goals. Students should: 143 (1) understand the nature of CS and its place in the modern world, (2) understand that CS interweaves concepts and skills, (3) be able to use CS skills (especially computational thinking) in their problem-solving activities in other subjects. […] (see [4] page 7). Similar demands are used in the basic experiences by Fothe. “CSE is a general education that allows students the following basic experiences: (1) to discover and to understand computing systems (informatics systems) in several parts of life, (2) to recognize, that done or planned activities can be formulated as an algorithm and transferred into a computer program, that modeling allows to transfer parts of reality into a computer-compatible form and that computing systems (informatics systems) are designed by humans, (3) to acquire problem-solving skills in dealing with exercises, which are useful at school and real life (“modeling techniques” means as techniques of mental work). These experiences are connected to each other in several ways. 1 ” [6] In summary, to understand CSE as a general education it is necessary to understand general informatics contents and processes and to use this knowledge in everyday life. As mentioned earlier many activities in our everyday life access databases. In order to ensure a general education the topic “data modeling and database systems” should be a part of CSE. In the CSTA K-12 Standards for CS is required that students should be able to select appropriate database formats for a particular computational problem and to form abstract ideas about specific components (e.g., input, output, processors, and databases) and their roles in the computational spectrum (see [4] page 11). There exist many ideas and concepts to teach “data modeling and database systems” for university students. Other concepts focus only on the use of specific database tools. Antonitsch uses another approach. He suggests to develop structure awareness by starting with analyzing and querying ready-to-use databases provided by the teacher [1]. Nevertheless, it remains unclear which general informatics contents and processes are necessary to teach “data modeling and database systems”. In German school this topic is a part of CSE in lower secondary education. The objective of this article is to provide criteria for exercises (informatics contents and processes, requirement areas) in order to teach “data modeling and database systems” in CSE in lower secondary education. In this study, existing teaching material is used to get an idea of teaching this topic as a general education. 1 All translations (German – English) were done by the author.
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Fakultät für Mathematik, Informat
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Program Committee Michal Armoni Wei
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Challenge and Creativity: Students
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Challenges in Computer Science Educ
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These echo a 2008 report from the N
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examples, and in practice teachers
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Figure 3: A trace of bubble sort fr
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either their own program or another
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ital system used a variety of inter
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computer science, and with the less
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effect of different factors on the
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(GE) and freshmen CS and Lyceum (GR
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Performance Expectancy (PE) Satisfa
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for active CS teachers. Furthermore
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participants change between the roo
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Altogether 830 participants visited
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7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The initial equi
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• self-concept in science • ins
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mean at t0 mean at t2 mean at t0 me
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survey at the time t0 time of surve
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characteristics mean m (regarding t
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technology subjects in senior secon
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aim to react on these topics, exper
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the educational programs and ration
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y choice of handset, choice of netw
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8. REFERENCES [1] Bell, T. et al. 2
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Agile Projects in High School Compu
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ited time, heterogeneous student ab
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the target audience. This phase is
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longer than one to two weeks (which
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e.g. assessing individual achieveme
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Conceptual Change and Epistemologic
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einterpreted, or excluded, for exam
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How Teachers in Different Education
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attended by about a 33-40 % of all
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The assumption of sphericity was no
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[23] Huynh, H. and Feldt, L. S. 197
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Ways of Planning Lessons on the Top
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other topic. The reasons given vari
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Promoting Computational Thinking wi
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algorithm or a product is viewed as
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Preparing Teachers for Teaching Inf
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However, even when such learning th
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first two questions. We maintain th
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