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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

(n=15) strongly agreed that their students found the lecture interesting while the remaining 4 agreed – a 100% positive response. 73.7% (n=14) strongly agreed that the lecture had improved the students’ understanding of the subject with the remaining 5 agreeing. The last question in this section asked whether some students had changed their view of computer science in a positive way. 36.8% (n=7) strongly agreed. 42.1% (8) agreed and the remaining 21.1% were neutral. We asked whether, as a result of the lecture, one or more students were now more likely to consider taking computing subjects further at school. 20% (n=3) strongly agreed with this statement, 53.3% (n=8) agreed (i.e. 73.3% of responses were positive) and the remaining 4 were neutral. Four teachers did not answer. We asked a similar question about students’ university choices. In response, 23.5% (n=4) strongly agreed that one or more students were more likely to go on to take the subject at university, 52.9% (n=9) agreed, meaning 76.4% of responses were positive. A further 17.6% (n=3) were neutral, 1 person strongly disagreed and 1 did not answer the question. The teacher who strongly disagreed was otherwise very positive about the lecture, and did not suggest any improvements. It is unclear why they answered the question the way they did. 3.2 Comments The comments in response suggest that teachers believe the form of a lecture affects student enjoyment as much as its content. A typical comment said, “The lecture was fast-paced, dynamic and really challenged the students [...] This was a very appealing way to promote the study of ICT.” Another teacher approved of “the mix of talking, video and practical examples.” Many others mentioned that the kinaesthetic activities were the students’ favourite parts of the lectures. Comments by teachers on the benefits of the interactive elements followed a couple of themes. Some mentioned stylistic benefits (e.g., increasing student enjoyment and engagement), while others mentioned contentrelated benefits (e.g., modeling of computer functionality and opening students’ minds). 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS We have evaluated teachers’ perceptions of the value of university lectures taking place in schools. This involves lectures that draw from research topics and involve interactivity using a kinaesthetic approach. In particular we focused on teachers’ perceptions about the immediate effect of the lectures and whether it had changed students’ attitudes to taking the subject further. Teachers were confident that their students had found the lectures interesting and now understood the subject better. They were less strong but still very positive in their agreement that the lectures had changed their students’ perception about computing, and that they had influenced students’ plans for the future. This may reflect the difficulty of one lecture to change overall perceptions or future plans, but it may also simply be a reflection of the difficulty teachers face in assessing and reporting students’ views. 5. FUTURE WORK This pilot study examined teacher responses to 19 lectures about computing. We hope to gather more responses in a larger study to come. We also intend to gather more direct and in-depth data on student perceptions. Finally, we are in the process of collecting 152 and analysing recruitment data to examine the ultimate effect of talks on recruitment at university. Whilst this study has focused on the value of such talks to teachers, this ongoing work will explore the value to universities. 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The cs4fn programme is funded by EPSRC research agreement (EP/F032641/1) with additional support from Google’s CS4HS programme. CHI+MED: Multidisciplinary Computer-Human Interaction research for the design and safe use of interactive medical devices project is funded by EPSRC research agreement EP/G059063/1. 7. REFERENCES [1] Bartsch , R.A. & Cobern, K.M. 2003. Effectiveness of PowerPoint presentations in lectures, Computers & Education, 41 (1) August, 77–86, Elsevier, DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-1315(03)00027-7 [2] Cooper, B. & Foy, J.M. 1967. Evaluating the effectiveness of lectures, Higher Education Quarterly, 21(2) 182-185. March. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.1967.tb00231.x [3] Curzon, P. 2007. "Serious Fun in Computer Science", 12th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, organised by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 39(3) p1, DOI: 10.1145/1269900.1268785 [4] Curzon, P., Black, J., Meagher, L.R., McOwan, P.W. 2009. “cs4fn.org: Enthusing students about Computer Science”, Proceedings of Informatics Education Europe IV, Christoph Hermann, Tobias Lauer, Thomas Ottmann and Martina Welte (Eds.), pp73-80, Freiburg, Germany, November. [5] Curzon, P. & McOwan, P.W. 2008. “Engaging with Computer Science through Magic Shows”, ITiCSE 2008, The 13th ACM SIGCSE Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 40 (3), pp179-183. June 30-July 2, Madrid, Spain. DOI: 10.1145/1384271.1384320 [6] Myketiak, C., Curzon, P., Black, J., McOwan, P.W., and Meagher, L.R. 2012. cs4fn: a flexible model for computer science outreach. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (ITiCSE '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 297-302. DOI: 10.1145/2325296.2325366
Technocamps: Bringing Computer Science to the far west ABSTRACT Roger D. Boyle Computer Science Aberystwyth University Penglais Aberystwyth SY23 3DB Wales rob21@aber.ac.uk Technocamps is a 3-year EU funded project to bring an awareness of technical Informatics to the 11-19 age group in the ‘Convergence zone’ of Wales. The project is coordinated through four universities, with materials and activities being developed in each of the academic hubs. Projects of this scale are rare, both in terms of geographic area and financial backing, creating a new set of challenges and opportunities. We review the background to the project and its need, outline its activities during its first year and the challenges they have presented, and make observations about portability and derived good practice that might inform similar projects elsewhere. Longer term evaluation and longitudinal study will develop during the next two years of the work. 1. BACKGROUND Wales is a small country at the west of the UK mainland with a clear and illustrious culture, including a vibrant language. It is predominantly rural, although the south of the country became pre-eminent in [now defunct] coal mining and associated heavy industry. It is a victim of rural poverty, seasonal (un)employment and the collapse of industry with no compensatory re-investment. Informatics in UK schools is in a difficult state of transition [3]. 2012 saw very consequential announcements by government [5] and the Royal Society [6]. In particular the latter proposes the teaching of Informatics be partitioned three ways: Hannah M. Dee Computer Science Aberystwyth University Penglais Aberystwyth SY23 3DB Wales hmd1@aber.ac.uk • Computer Science [CS]: The rigorous academic discipline, encompassing programming languages, data structures, algorithms, etc. • Information Technology [IT]: The use of computers, in industry, commerce, the arts and elsewhere, including aspects of IT systems architecture, human factors, project management, etc. • Digital Literacy: The general ability to use computers. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. WiPSCE 2012, Hamburg, Germany Copyright 20XX ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX ...$15.00. 153 Frédéric Labrosse Computer Science Aberystwyth University Penglais Aberystwyth SY23 3DB Wales ffl@aber.ac.uk In brief, it is widely agreed that Digital Literacy should be achieved by all but is a skill akin to the ability to read, unsuited to formal curriculum time or assessment in high schools. IT is a respectable and necessary academic activity but is distinct from CS. It is the very weak condition of CS that has provoked concern in influential quarters. 2. IMPLEMENTATION 2.1 Organisation Technocamps [7] is an EU Convergence European Social Fund project, specifically designed to address the CS gap within the 11-19 age group within the Welsh Convergence Zone. Its aims are: to encourage interest in Science and Technology; to provide opportunities for students to gain insight into the practical application of cognate STEM subjects in a work environment; to increase the number of girls taking up science and technology; to increase the number of students who progress to computer science, technology and engineering at higher levels. The 3-year project attracted funding of £6M and involves 4 universities across the zone. By design, activities are where possible portable between sites. Significant transport problems and sparse population mean that in most cases schools are served by their closest HEI. After decades of decline, the Welsh language is enjoying a slow but steady recovery, which is strongest in many of the more isolated areas the project serves [8]. Accordingly, materials and activities are being made bilingually. The project targets 11-19 year-olds, and especially females and those who are not in education, employment, or training. ‘Engagement’ is defined not to be a passing contact, and should be a minimum of 6 hours of exposure. It is acknowledged that 6 consecutive hours would be unlikely, and the precise target is to meet an individual at least twice for at least 3.5 hours each time. 2.2 Activities One day engagements: Most contact is via one-day contact; material is specifically designed to be distinct from the school curriculum. Sessions last about 4 hours, with topics ranging from general (Scratch programming) to the more rarefied (such as cryptography, robotics, or Arduino [1] based work). Bootcamps: ‘Bootcamps’ are 3-day engagements: robot navigation, and Arduino projects (sailing robots and (digitally ornamented clothing) have been topics. Clearly, three full days provide a depth of opportunity in excess of 3.5 hours: this is an opportunity of great use to research-oriented
Page 1 and 2:
Fakultät für Mathematik, Informat
Page 3 and 4:
Program Committee Michal Armoni Wei
Page 5 and 6:
Challenge and Creativity: Students
Page 7 and 8:
Challenges in Computer Science Educ
Page 9 and 10:
These echo a 2008 report from the N
Page 11 and 12:
examples, and in practice teachers
Page 13 and 14:
Figure 3: A trace of bubble sort fr
Page 15 and 16:
either their own program or another
Page 17 and 18:
ital system used a variety of inter
Page 19 and 20:
computer science, and with the less
Page 21 and 22:
effect of different factors on the
Page 23 and 24:
(GE) and freshmen CS and Lyceum (GR
Page 25 and 26:
Performance Expectancy (PE) Satisfa
Page 27 and 28:
for active CS teachers. Furthermore
Page 29 and 30:
participants change between the roo
Page 31 and 32:
Altogether 830 participants visited
Page 33 and 34:
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The initial equi
Page 35 and 36:
• self-concept in science • ins
Page 37 and 38:
mean at t0 mean at t2 mean at t0 me
Page 39 and 40:
survey at the time t0 time of surve
Page 41 and 42:
characteristics mean m (regarding t
Page 43 and 44:
technology subjects in senior secon
Page 45 and 46:
aim to react on these topics, exper
Page 47 and 48:
the educational programs and ration
Page 49 and 50:
y choice of handset, choice of netw
Page 51 and 52:
8. REFERENCES [1] Bell, T. et al. 2
Page 53 and 54:
Agile Projects in High School Compu
Page 55 and 56:
ited time, heterogeneous student ab
Page 57 and 58:
the target audience. This phase is
Page 59 and 60:
longer than one to two weeks (which
Page 61 and 62:
e.g. assessing individual achieveme
Page 63 and 64:
Conceptual Change and Epistemologic
Page 65 and 66:
einterpreted, or excluded, for exam
Page 67 and 68:
How Teachers in Different Education
Page 69 and 70:
attended by about a 33-40 % of all
Page 71 and 72:
The assumption of sphericity was no
Page 73 and 74:
[23] Huynh, H. and Feldt, L. S. 197
Page 75 and 76:
Ways of Planning Lessons on the Top
Page 77 and 78:
other topic. The reasons given vari
Page 79 and 80:
Promoting Computational Thinking wi
Page 81 and 82:
algorithm or a product is viewed as
Page 83 and 84:
Preparing Teachers for Teaching Inf
Page 85 and 86:
However, even when such learning th
Page 87 and 88:
Grand challenges for the UK: Upskil
Page 89 and 90:
first two questions. We maintain th
Page 91 and 92:
(Some) Grand Challenges of Computer
Page 93 and 94:
ecoming more student-centered. Inde
Page 95 and 96:
[13] OECD. (2006). Are students rea
Page 97 and 98:
in the world, for example, as descr
Page 99 and 100:
The aims of the case study were to
Page 101 and 102: Figure 8: Acquisition of programmin
Page 103 and 104: The focus group girls were more con
Page 105 and 106: tool for teachers and students in t
Page 107 and 108: eledSQL - A New Web-Based Learning
Page 109 and 110: create and manage teacher accounts.
Page 111 and 112: ABSTRACT Bringing Contexts into the
Page 113 and 114: 3.1.1 Greenfoot as a framework for
Page 115 and 116: Real-world context Views of Computi
Page 117 and 118: Real-world context GP Context Artif
Page 119 and 120: i. e. theories, models, frameworks,
Page 121 and 122: number P-156 in Lecture Notes in In
Page 123 and 124: 1. Context-based education in compu
Page 125 and 126: Figure 1. Network traffic for authe
Page 127 and 128: A weak point of the Vigenère algor
Page 129 and 130: We have learnt that we can both loo
Page 131 and 132: Comparing CSTA K-12 Computer Scienc
Page 133 and 134: grade 4, 5, 6 or 8, depending on ch
Page 135 and 136: Table 1. Scoring Scale for the Impl
Page 137 and 138: the highest rate of implementation
Page 139 and 140: Information Theory on Czech Grammar
Page 141 and 142: of information in a message M, repr
Page 143 and 144: Data modeling and database systems
Page 145 and 146: the knowledge about ICT and CS (see
Page 147 and 148: The Mindstorm Effect: A Gender Anal
Page 149 and 150: Exploring the processing of formatt
Page 151: Teachersʼ Perceptions Of The Value
Page 155 and 156: Abenteuer Informatik - Hands-on exh
Page 157 and 158: Gaming and Mathematics: A Cross Cur
Page 159 and 160: Turi: Chatbot software for schools
Page 161 and 162: ABSTRACT Learning Fields in Vocatio
Page 163 and 164: ABSTRACT This study examines the po
show all

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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?