Listen and learn: Research paper Presentations with similar research topics are each assigned to round tables where hour-long discussions take place. Roundtables are intended to be more collaborative discussions about research.
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The main theoretical framework that shapes this research is Constructivism. In the three year unit plan and lessons that will be discussed, a deeper dive of the first year lessons will be looked at. The design of the units and lessons fosters students' learning through providing students experiences that help them make connections between what they are learning, what they know, and how to apply their learning. The lesson path for the Year 1 unit is as follows (with suggested modality in parenthesis): Lesson 1 - Pick a Card (unplugged); Lesson 2 - Choose Your Own Adventure (hybrid); Lesson 3 - Welcome to the Fair (hybrid); Lesson 4 - Data and Solar Weather Crossword Puzzle (hybrid); and Lesson 5 - Escape Room and Codeword (hybrid). In each of these lessons, students will be able to experience and adapt the active learning in the lesson to their own needs and will get to see computer and data science in a new light. As an example, in Lesson 3 (Welcome to the Fair), students will go to different stations to pick different “variables” like numbers, animals, etc. that they will input into a Google Sheet. The data recording that they do will then generate a code for Python that is written by different formulas in Google Sheets. The code that is created will actually be a live code that can work in the Python console. This type of experience will help the students bridge their knowledge of Google Workspace with the beginning concepts of coding. This research is also shaped by Cultivation Theory in that the scaffolding of the lessons from Year 1 will extend to the lesson design units and lessons for Year 2 (neural networks) and Year 3 (deep learning). By cultivating confidence in learning, these higher level concepts will become more accessible for students.
The research that was conducted about hybrid and unplugged lessons in computer and data science and the current resources that are available for teachers was grounded in a literature review. While these types of lessons were discussed, the resources that were provided to teachers were lacking. As this research continues to build on itself and more students are able to participate in the lessons, anecdotal observation and work produced by the students will continue and provide guidance for the lessons that are built for Year 2. The participants of the research are students who enroll in STEM 1 classes when they enter middle school in 6th grade. The 3 Year Unit Plan is designed to follow these students in STEM 2 and STEM 3 in middle school so that they can focus on understanding the background and essence of computer and data science. Through these activities, the goal is to have the students focus on Neural Networks in Year 2 and Deep Learning in Year 3. Middle school students (grades 6-8) were targeted for this study as many of the students come in with solid knowledge of Google Workspace due to the 1:1 Chromebook initiative in the district. In middle school, many of these students continue to use Chromebooks in class, but run into a different style of more formal coding in Python by the time they leave middle school. The lessons and activities are designed to ignite prior knowledge of learning with more active and game-based learning approaches to make formal coding more approachable.
The literature review of this topic provides examples of unplugged learning. However, the research lacks tangible lessons for teachers and coaches to use and also does not take into account a longer view that a unit plan can provide. As with other literature reviews, while it may be considered completed at the time of the paper’s writing, the learning is always extending as more studies are completed. Feedback from students and teachers will be collected and analyzed as the lessons are implemented later in the school year. It is anticipated that both teachers and students will have a positive outlook of the lessons and will produce artifacts that show an extension of their current learning as they complete the five lessons in Unit 1. They will also have a deeper understanding of what coding actually is from a conceptual perspective and also will have a stronger foundation and a greater anticipation of what the Year 2 lessons will hold for them.
In looking at the progression of technology use for students K-12, there seems to be a disconnect between what the students learn about and the skills they develop in the primary grades and what they are expected to know to work more formally in coding in high school. The middle school area is where the bridges are most needed. Students go from an experience of using manipulatives and unplugged activities in the primary grades for many subject areas and then are expected to jump into black and white typing and coding in the higher levels without the background knowledge for what they are learning and without the confidence that they are building on the skills that they have acquired. The literature review research in this area provides some examples of studies done in small groups and camps with students using unplugged activities, but more discussion of hybrid activities is needed as many of the lessons morph into this type of lesson. ISTE attendees will find not only the research in this study interesting, but will find the lesson and unit plans that are being provided valuable as these resources are not as readily available. To make the research more approachable for the educators in attendance, the discussion will focus on the construction, uses, and reasons behind the lessons and will make them more user friendly for teachers and coaches, similar to how the lessons themselves are making connections for students.
[1] Akiba, D. (2022). Computational Thinking and Coding for Young Children: A Hybrid Approach to Link Unplugged and Plugged Activities. Education Sciences, 12(11), 793. doi:10.3390/educsci12110793
[2] Battal, A., Afacan Adanır, G., & Gülbahar, Y. (2021, June). Computer Science Unplugged: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 50(1), 24–47. doi:10.1177/00472395211018801
[3] Bell, T., & Vahrenhold, J. (2018). CS unplugged—how is it used, and does it work?. In Adventures between lower bounds and higher altitudes: essays dedicated to Juraj Hromkovič on the occasion of his 60th birthday (pp. 497-521). Springer.
[4] Gibson, P., Morgan, R., & Brett, A. (2023). Primary Teacher Solutions: Ready Pedagogy and Inspirational Ideas. Taylor & Francis.
[5] Zhou, Y., Wu, L., Zhang, Y., Li, J., & Liu, Y. (2013). A survey on context-aware recommender systems. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 25(4), 813-830.
[6] Ford, V., Siraj, A., Haynes, A., & Brown, E. (2019, June). Capture the Flag Unplugged: an Offline Cyber Competition. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 809-814). ACM.
[7] Garcia, D. D., Ding, W., Cohen, J., Ericson, B., Gray, J., & Reed, D. (2015). One-day activities for K-12 face-to-face outreach. In Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '15) (pp. 520-521). ACM.
[8] Nolan, K., Faherty, R., Quille, K., Becker, B. A., & Bergin, S. (2020). Developing an inclusive K-12 outreach model. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE '20) (pp. 145-151). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery.
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