Design and Evaluation of Computational Thinking Tasks in the <colette/> Project: Experiences Gained from Workshops with Secondary and Grammar School Students in Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia

Eva Schmidthaler, Sylvia van Borkulo, Martin Cápay, Bjarnheiður Kristinsdóttir, Rebecca Stäter, Tim Läufer, Matthias Ludwig, David Hornsby, Jakob Skogø, Zsolt Lavicza

2023

Abstract

In recent years, numerous applications (apps) for mobile devices have been developed for STEM education, but there is a lack of suitable educational apps that support teachers in promoting computational thinking (CT) in mathematics and computer science (CS) lessons. In this position paper, two types of CT tasks, Building Cubes and Draw-o-Bot, of the newly developed <colette/> app with augmented reality (AR) function, are described, and preliminary results from four workshops that were held in total with 76 10-18-year-old secondary and grammar school students in Austria (W1), the Netherlands (W2), and Slovakia (W3) are discussed. The tasks and the mobile app itself were created as part of the <colette/>-project, an Erasmus+ project, in which seven institutions from five European countries are involved. Each type of task includes a set of CT tasks related to the block-based programming (BBP) app. In the workshops, we set out to explore how the participating secondary school students solved the CT tasks, whilst using <colette/>. The experiences made in the workshops will be used to inform the further development of the application, and to prepare teacher training to support the successful implementation of <colette/> as an educational tool in schools. The first findings indicate that the participating students react positively to the app, can solve BBP tasks successfully, and create loops to shorten their code. In the future, further task types will be implemented in the app and researched.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Schmidthaler E., van Borkulo S., Cápay M., Kristinsdóttir B., Stäter R., Läufer T., Ludwig M., Hornsby D., Skogø J. and Lavicza Z. (2023). Design and Evaluation of Computational Thinking Tasks in the Project: Experiences Gained from Workshops with Secondary and Grammar School Students in Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-641-5, SciTePress, pages 297-304. DOI: 10.5220/0011974700003470

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu23,
author={Eva Schmidthaler and Sylvia van Borkulo and Martin Cápay and Bjarnheiður Kristinsdóttir and Rebecca Stäter and Tim Läufer and Matthias Ludwig and David Hornsby and Jakob Skogø and Zsolt Lavicza},
title={Design and Evaluation of Computational Thinking Tasks in the Project: Experiences Gained from Workshops with Secondary and Grammar School Students in Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2023},
pages={297-304},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011974700003470},
isbn={978-989-758-641-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Design and Evaluation of Computational Thinking Tasks in the Project: Experiences Gained from Workshops with Secondary and Grammar School Students in Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia
SN - 978-989-758-641-5
AU - Schmidthaler E.
AU - van Borkulo S.
AU - Cápay M.
AU - Kristinsdóttir B.
AU - Stäter R.
AU - Läufer T.
AU - Ludwig M.
AU - Hornsby D.
AU - Skogø J.
AU - Lavicza Z.
PY - 2023
SP - 297
EP - 304
DO - 10.5220/0011974700003470
PB - SciTePress