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

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InfoSphere: An Extracurricular Learning Environment for Computer Science Nadine Bergner Lehr- und Forschungsgebiet Informatik 9, RWTH Aachen Ahornstr. 55 52074 Aachen +49 241 8021933 bergner@cs.rwth-aachen.de ABSTRACT This paper describes one of our measures to raise students’ interest for Computer Science (CS) and to provide them with a realistic idea of the field. We outline the underlying concepts and theories of InfoSphere – the extracurricular learning environment for CS at RWTH Aachen University. After explaining the theoretical, organizational, and infrastructural foundations, we provide an overview over the didactical concept of our 13 different CS workshops for school students of different ages. Furthermore, we introduce the benefits of InfoSphere for our three different target groups: school students, university students in teacher training, and active CS teachers. Finally, we present first results from our ongoing evaluation of the school students’ perception of the field of CS before and after visiting one of the InfoSphere workshops. Keywords Extracurricular learning environment; didactical concept; computer science workshops; school students; students in teacher training; CS teachers. 1. MOTIVATION There is a near wide agreement of economy and society that we have a growing shortage of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates in general and specifically a growing need for computer scientists. Despite the fact of splendid job opportunities, too few students major in Computer Science (CS). Main reasons for this mismatch are the low interest and little previous knowledge in STEM topics among school students [20]. For CS the situation is especially critical because it is no compulsory school subject in most German states, e.g. North Rhine-Westphalia. Therefore, mainly the social environment is responsible for the children’s interest in CS [18]. There are a lot of prejudices and false images about computer scientists, e.g. that they are loners and do not like to work in teams [18]. As Engeser and Limbert showed it is specifically important necessary to get young kids into contact with CS topics, to prevent these misconceptions [8]. This is the only way to reach the students before they decide against a CS course, which is only an elective in school, and in the following against a CS study program at university because of the negative social stereotypes. In order to raise interest in CS and STEM in general and to communicate a realistic idea about CS, the Learning Technology Research Group of RWTH Aachen University established Jan Holz Lehr- und Forschungsgebiet Informatik 9, RWTH Aachen Ahornstr. 55 52074 Aachen +49 241 8021935 holz@cs.rwth-aachen.de 26 Ulrik Schroeder Lehr- und Forschungsgebiet Informatik 9, RWTH Aachen Ahornstr. 55 52074 Aachen +49 241 8021930 schroeder@cs.rwth-aachen.de InfoSphere 1 as an extracurricular learning environment (in German Schülerlabor) for CS, which opened in 2010. The main advantage of an extracurricular learning environment is its high flexibility in time and space which allows for active and selfregulated and explorative learning methodologies. Furthermore, it offers extraordinary opportunities in educational technology and specifically prepared learning materials which cannot be found in normal school classes. Because of these possibilities various topics of CS are presented in an attractive way and thus help to represent an interesting and multifaceted image of CS in general and thus also counteract social stereotypes. At the moment we offer 13 workshops about a variety of CS topics for school students from the age of eight up. Additionally, InfoSphere provides opportunities for students in teacher training for CS as well. They can gain first experiences in teaching in a prepared and safe environment with pupils and receive feedback from tutors. We let our CS teacher-students design learning materials and have them supervise InfoSphere workshops. The idea is to link the theoretical CS and teaching knowledge acquired in university courses with practical experiences in an early stage of their education for formative evaluation. Within InfoSphere we also address CS teachers of all school types as our third target group. Their situation is often difficult because CS is a novel school subject with too few learning materials provided by established school books. Also, many current CS teachers have not studied CS as a topic at university. Instead, they only took part in a further training. Furthermore, CS constantly changes and evolves. All this makes it is a complex task to teach CS in school. With our workshop offerings we try to support and inspire teachers, by providing them the possibility to visit us with whole school classes. Moreover we make additional school materials available free of charge and support external teacher training programs. In summary, InfoSphere is targeted at school students, university students in teacher training, and active CS teachers. First of all, we provide an opportunity for school students to find out about various topics of CS and actively gain an own picture about what CS is and if it might be an interesting field for their studies and later profession. On the other hand, we utilize the flexible and innovative learning environment to improve CS education for university students in teacher training as well as further education 1 http://schuelerlabor.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
for active CS teachers. Furthermore, InfoSphere represents a potent research environment, where we can explore and analyze innovative learning methods, educational designs and media with school students. To set up research experiments would be a lot harder to achieve in regular school classes. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND There is ongoing research about extracurricular learning since several years. In 1994 Griffin described how learning in informal science settings would be most effective [11]. She looked into the students’ view of learning in such informal settings and identified orientation and preparation as the most important factors. Otherwise the unknown learning environment attracts most of the attention instead of the workshop itself. Thus, we connect our workshops with topics of regular school lessons. More specifically regarding extracurricular learning environments, Euler scrutinized how school students can act as researchers and what the resulting learning effects can be [9]. The main result is that it is important for the school students to learn on their own, which means they have to actively work with the contents instead of just listening to a teacher. Based on these findings we design our workshops with large proportions of action-oriented learning. In addition, Guderian studied the learning effects of pupils in the age of 10 to 14 after repeated visits of a physics lab [12]. In accordance to his findings we offer additional workshops for individual participants in order to keep up and raise students’ interest. As a consequence of current findings about extracurricular learning environments and with regard to research results concerning learning concepts for STEM topics, we design our workshops to facilitate explorative, action-oriented learning. So far, there is little research about this didactical learning concept in the field of CS, but results from other STEM fields can also be applied to InfoSphere. For example, Bell has focused on experimental learning in physics [4]. He worked out the following activity model (translated by the authors): Table 1. Activity model following Bell 1. defining 2. exploring 3. reflecting orienting formulating the problem assuming planning searching for information expressing knowledge / modeling experimenting analyzing / finding results presenting discussing / reflecting applying For InfoSphere workshops we distinguish three phases of defining the problem, exploring by planning/modeling/experimenting and reflecting by presenting/discussing learning and working results. The first stage focusses on the students’ self-directed process of finding and defining the problem. An authentic, all-day situation 27 is presented to the students and questions lead them to discover a problem to be solved. The second stage is the main working phase during the InfoSphere workshops. The participants work in groups to solve tasks on different complexity levels. Thereby, we follow a scheme leaning towards a software developing process of planning, modeling, experimenting and realization. In the third stage we encourage reflection and additionally promote students’ communication and presenting skills by letting them present their findings to the other participants. Aepkers et al. [1] studied exploratory, inquiry-based learning in general. Many of their findings describe effects on the learning process which are independent of the content and thus are applied to InfoSphere workshops as well. One specific goal of InfoSphere is to have participants develop a more realistic concept of the field of CS. Studies about novices’ expectations and prior knowledge of CS e.g. [21] and [8] show that the general perception of CS does not match well with reality. Therefore, we consider it important to foster a more realistic perception of CS, and to avoid stereotypes, and raise an interest for elective CS courses. In detail, Knobelsdorf evaluated the motives of successful CS university students and explored reasons for dropping out. Her analyses show that the most mentioned reason for problems in CS studies is “too challenging requirements” followed by “too low mathematical prior knowledge”, “lack of time” and “poor motivation” [16]. To avoid students from enrolling into a CS university program with wrong expectations we also inform about the contents and requirement of CS study programs. This cannot be achieved only in InfoSphere workshops. We rather educate (future) CS teachers as multipliers, who observe the misconceptions concerning CS during workshops and while preparing InfoSphere learning media. For the other mentioned problems we also utilize InfoSphere for freshman before they start their study program in prep courses. Also in the first two terms we offer InfoSphere workshops for students who experience difficulties in their normal courses. These workshops provide them with an alternative access to the current topics and give them a second chance catch up and pass the exam. These uses are not further described in the following of this paper; see [2] and [14] for more details. 3. INFOSPHERE CONCEPT In order to enable building a broader perception of CS we select exemplary topics from many different fields to demonstrate the wide range of CS. The collection of workshop topics is based on fundamental ideas of CS as described by Schwill [22]. In addition, we took German CS school curricula as well as educational standards [10] into account and link our workshops to regular school lessons [6]. Furthermore, InfoSphere is targeted at a variety of target groups: school students, university students in CS teacher training, CS teachers, as well as other professional or non-professional people with an interest in CS. The following subsection describes the advantages for all target groups in more detail. 3.1 Target Groups First of all, for primary and secondary school students InfoSphere is the place to get in contact with CS. They can gain an insight into the world of informatics without feeling school pressure. All the workshops are held by students in teacher training of RWTH Aachen University. So the participants’ performance does not influence their school grades. Besides the possibility to visit
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