The effect of CS unplugged on middle-school students' views of CS

Abstract

Many students hold incorrect views of what computer science (CS) is, and they have negative attitudes towards the field. In order to address these difficulties, a series of learning activities called Computer Science Unplugged was developed by Bell et al.[3]. These activities expose young people to central concepts in CS in an entertaining way, without requiring a computer. Using questionnaires and interviews, we examined the effect of the activities on middle-school students' views of CS, specifically, on their views of: (a) the nature of CS; (b) the characteristics of computer scientists and work in CS; (c) the variety of employment in CS. The results indicate that-although the students generally understood what CS is-they perceived the computer as the essence of CS and not primarily as a tool, contrary to the intention of the CS Unplugged activities. We suggest additions to the activities intended to increase the change in the views of CS that students have.

Research on e-Learning and ICT in Education

“…The two groups were different in that the students without PC usage had a greater diffi culty to correct errors than the students with PC usage due to the lack of immediate and individualised feedback. On the other hand, with regard to cooperativeness, the results of our study agree with those of respective investigations which support that teaching without PC enhances the interest and teamwork of students Bell et al, 2009 ;Curzon & McOwan, 2008 ;Taub et al, 2009 ).…”

“…• Results of a series of studies focused on the experiential teaching of computer science without any use of computers show that the experiential learning of programming promotes collaboration and teamwork Bell, Alexander, Freema, & Grimley, 2009 ;Curzon & McOwan, 2008 ;Taub, Ben-Ari, & Armoni, 2009 ). • In the CCF for ICT teaching in primary education, the initial students' misconceptions have not been taken into account.…”

Serious toys II

“…When considering the dearth of Computer Science (CS) curriculum included in K-12 classes in the U.S. [16], it is not difficult to conclude that outreach efforts in the K-12 arena must be enhanced. In recent years, several successful efforts to develop K-12 outreach programs have been reported [5,8,10,14,17]. According to Thies et al [15], these and other efforts can be classified into one of three categories.…”

Reflections on outreach programs in CS classes

“…Recent studies [9,24] show that outreach programs can significantly influence the attitude towards Computer Science.…”

“…In particular, we evaluate the activities in Computer Science Unplugged with respect to learning objectives and classify these objectives according to Bloom's revised taxonomy [3]. The resulting classification sheds some light on the contrast between the above-mentioned study of Feaster et al [13] and the observation that outreach is rather effective when directed at middle schoolers [1,9,24]. …”