Identifying Design Principles for CS Teacher Ebooks through Design-Based Research

Abstract

Several countries are trying to provide access to computing education for all secondary students. However, there are not enough teachers who are prepared to teach computer science. Interactive electronic books (ebooks) are a promising approach for providing low-cost professional development in computer science. Over the last four years, our research group has been conducting design-based research by iteratively developing and testing versions of a teacher ebook to help secondary teachers with no programming experience learn to teach an introductory programming course. The interactive elements in the ebook were designed based on research results from educational psychology and are intended to make learning more efficient and effective. Our goals for this effort are to increase teachers' knowledge of computer science concepts and to improve teachers' confidence in their ability to teach computer science. In this paper we summarize our previous work and report on a large-scale study of version two of the teacher ebook. We also recommend several design principles for interactive ebooks for computing teachers based on feedback from teachers, log file analyses, and randomized controlled studies.

Social Worked-Examples Technique to Enhance Student Engagement in Program Visualization

“…It could be useful to teach syntactic and semantic language constructs (33). Parson's problems are designed as an engaging programming practice, which did not require students to type any code or encounter syntax errors (35), as shown in Figure 1. In Parson's problems, the design should return instant feedback by highlighting blocks that are in the wrong place or have the incorrect indentation (35).…”

“…Parson's problems are designed as an engaging programming practice, which did not require students to type any code or encounter syntax errors (35), as shown in Figure 1. In Parson's problems, the design should return instant feedback by highlighting blocks that are in the wrong place or have the incorrect indentation (35). Using Parson's problems could effectively enhance novice code writing skills (34,36), because it only requires a student to understand the problem, and it never produces a syntax error.…”

Code ABC MOOC for Math Teachers

“…The original material for the Python track was developed in the USA in similar cycles by Guzdial and Ericson [11]. This material was translated and adapted for the Code ABC MOOC in a project funded by the Finnish National Board of Education, coordinated by the Innokas Network at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki and implemented jointly by the Faculty of Educational Sciences and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki and the Department of Computer Science at Aalto University.…”

“…The main goals of the Python track were, according to the goals of the original material [10], to increase teachers' knowledge of computer science concepts as well as to improve teachers' confidence in their ability to teach CS principles. The course was designed as a lightweight learning experience [11], allowing busy teachers to participate when they had 20-60 minutes to spare. The exercises were designed to be small and feature low cognitive loads, which was achieved by placing relevant examples just before the exercises.…”

“…Multiple exercise types are used: multiple choice and fill-in-the-blanks test conceptual understanding, Parson's problems are used for teaching basic programming constructs, and exercises consisting of modifying active code segments in the on-line programming environment provide wider opportunities to try out the concepts learned [36]. In addition, the material utilizes the code lens concept to demonstrate program execution [11].…”