OurKidsCode: Facilitating Families to Be Creative with Computing

Nina Bresnihan

1 a

, Glenn Strong

1 b

, Lorraine Fisher

1 c

, Richard Millwood

1 d

and

Aine Lynch

School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

National Parents Council (Primary), Ireland

Keywords: Pre-K/K-12 Education, Community Building, Active Learning, Constructivism and Social Constructivism,

Lifelong Learning: Continuing Professional Training and Development.

Abstract:

OurKidsCode is a joint project between Trinity College Dublin and the Irish National Parents’ Council (Pri-

mary) which aims to promote and support families’ interest and activity in computing through the delivery of

family creative-coding workshops at a national scale in Ireland. There is evidence that parents highly value

computer science education, and are interested in supporting and encouraging their children’s engagement

with it. However because of their lack of knowledge and skills, they ﬁnd this challenging. We present a ratio-

nale for the project, and report on the design, development and evaluation of family creative coding workshops

delivered in non formal settings which engage families as computational co-creators. The evaluation of the

pilot workshops show promising results for parents’ attitude to learning with their families and signiﬁcant in-

creases in their conﬁdence to do so. They also provide evidence that the workshops succeed in promoting and

supporting families’ interest and creative activity in computing and the learning collaboration between parent

and child.

1 INTRODUCTION

OurKidsCode is a project designed to promote and

encourage Science, Technology, Engineering and

Mathematics (STEM) education by supporting par-

ents in Ireland who wish to engage their children’s in-

terest and activity in computing. It seeks to strengthen

the social support around a child by engaging their

families and community as learning partners as they

pursue pathways into computing. There is evidence

that parents value computing education, and are inter-

ested in supporting and encouraging their children’s

engagement with it (Gallup and Google, 2015; Finn,

2014). However because of their lack of knowl-

edge and skills they ﬁnd this challenging. To address

this the project proposes to design and deliver family

workshops where parents and children experience the

creative use of computing together. It thereby aims

to increase parents’ competence and conﬁdence with

digital skills and tools as they endeavour to support

their children’s learning. The project aims to have im-

pact at a national scale through partnerships to deliver

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4381-7005

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3772-2958

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2619-4654

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8001-1989

the workshops throughout Ireland. This paper out-

lines the design, development and evaluation of fam-

ily workshops for creative computing.

2 RATIONALE

The importance of Computational Thinking (CT) as a

21st century skill that can promote higher order skills

like problem solving, creative thinking, and logical

reasoning is widely accepted (Wing, 2006). Indeed

it has been argued that it is “an ability, a skillset,

that every child should possess” (Voogt et al., 2015)

There is common agreement that the best way to fos-

ter CT is through the learning of coding (Grover and

Pea, 2013). This, along with an acknowledged skills

shortage in the ICT sector, has meant that many coun-

tries have responded by updating or developing new

school curricula in computing (Keane, Neil and McIn-

erney, Clare, 2016). The Irish school system is made

up of primary, and second-level education. Primary

education consists of an eight year cycle: junior in-

fants, senior infants, and ﬁrst to sixth classes com-

mencing at age four or ﬁve. Pupils normally transfer

to second-level education at the age of twelve or thir-

teen. Computer Science was introduced as a subject

Bresnihan, N., Strong, G., Fisher, L., Millwood, R. and Lynch, Á.

OurKidsCode: Facilitating Families to Be Creative with Computing.

DOI: 10.5220/0007729405190530

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 519-530

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

519

at second-level in September 2018 and the National

Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) is

currently actively considering approaches to introduc-

ing the teaching of coding to all students in primary

schools through its ‘Coding in Primary Schools’ Ini-

tiative (Millwood et al., 2018).

Internationally, there is a body of evidence that

parents highly value computing education. In the US

two-thirds of parents think computer science should

be required learning in schools and 91% want their

child to learn more computer science in the future

(Gallup and Google, 2015). This desire for comput-

ing education among parents, and their willingness to

support it, is also evident in Ireland with 2 in 3 believ-

ing it to be as important as mainstream subjects de-

spite its current lack of availability in schools (Finn,

2014). However, children spend 85% of their wak-

ing time outside school, and longitudinal studies pro-

vide evidence conﬁrming that parental involvement

is strongly associated with better cognitive achieve-

ment (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003; Harris and

Goodall, 2008). Moreover, when families partici-

pate in speciﬁc programs aimed at increasing their in-

volvement, improvements are seen in overall achieve-

ment (Shaver and Walls, 1998); reading, writing, and

mathematics skills (Epstein et al., 1997; Jordan et al.,

2000; Starkey and Klein, 2000); homework com-

pletion (Cancio et al., 2004); US statewide assess-

ment scores (Sheldon, 2003); and behaviour (Kra-

tochwill et al., 2004; Pantin et al., 2003). Parents are

also key to choosing many of the non-formal learn-

ing experiences for their children (Crowley and Ja-

cobs, 2002). Parents’ inﬂuence on their children’s

educational choices is also crucial; 73% of Irish par-

ents recognise themselves as the biggest inﬂuencers

of subject choice and 90% of them agree that their

awareness of future career opportunities is an impor-

tant factor in encouraging the choice of STEM sub-

jects. However 68% reported feeling ‘moderately,’

‘poorly’ or ‘very poorly’ informed on STEM career

opportunities and industry needs (Accenture, 2015).

Indeed, many parents have little experience in

computing, technology or education, and struggle

to facilitate the learning experiences of a child who

has an interest in computing. Perceived barriers

to parental involvement in education are deﬁned by

(Hornby and Blackwell, 2018) as “individual parent

and family barriers; child factors; parent–teacher fac-

tors; and societal factors”. Of particular concern

here are parent and family barriers, with (Kong et al.,

2018) emphasising the importance of parents as feed-

back providers and stating that their involvement and

support are crucial to computing education in schools.

Moreover, (Sadka and Zuckerman, 2017) argue that

it is essential that we understand parents’, and their

children’s, perceptions of computing, including cod-

ing. This is because “making activities for children

often take place at informal learning environments.

In this context parents may join their children for co-

making activity. It has been shown that this type of

activity can be facilitated by educators that serve as

mentors” (Sadka and Zuckerman, 2017, p.609). De-

spite this, research revealed little in the way of spe-

ciﬁc programmes to address this with some notable

exceptions such as MIT’s Family Creative Learning

programme (Roque, 2016) and (Brahms, 2014) ex-

ploration of family participation in a museum-based

maker space.

Understanding the barriers to computing, and

conding in a family context can help address issues of

conﬁdence and competence, providing parents a pos-

itive experience of computing, and children with the

supports they need to explore and embrace the power

of computing. Accordingly, one of the key recom-

mendations of the Accenture report is that parents

be supported and it explicitly recommends working

with the national parents association to explore how

“we create the learning and the understanding of the

beneﬁts of STEM” (Accenture, 2015, p.18). While

this report focuses on second-level, our decision to

target parents of primary-school children through the

National Parents Council Primary (NPC), the national

representative organisation for parents of children at-

tending primary school, is based upon research which

shows that that the earlier the parental involvement

occurs the greater the impact (Sylva et al., 2008).

The evidence shows that parents are interested in

supporting and encouraging their children’s engage-

ment with computing education. With the introduc-

tion of computing at primary and second level in Ire-

land, it is clear that parental involvement (e.g., being

able to help a primary school student with their home-

work or a second-level student with career choices) is

of growing importance. Clearly there is potential for

parents/guardians to play a signiﬁcant role in spark-

ing and supporting interest in coding and CT. What

is lacking is support for those who wish to undertake

these kinds of initiatives but who feel they lack conﬁ-

dence, knowledge and skills. There is a strong ratio-

nale for supports for parents as they guide their chil-

dren in learning skills essential for success at school

as well as giving them a creative outlet for critical

thinking and collaborative problem solving.

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520

3 NEEDS ANALYSIS

We began by undertaking empirical research into our

users in order to establish demand and inform re-

source design. To this end, two questionnaires, one

for parents and the other for children, were designed

to capture data regarding their computing experience,

use, attitude, and availability. They also looked to dis-

cover what, if any, support children were currently re-

ceiving from their parents.

3.1 Questionnaire Design

The questionnaires took the form of mixed-methods

online questionnaires containing questions and scales

adapted from pre-validated instruments (Kay, 2006;

Cutts et al., 2017; Hayward et al., 2002; Aesaert et al.,

2015; Vannatta and Banister, 2008) as well as some

project-speciﬁc questions. They contained open ques-

tions and Likert scales exploring parents’ and chil-

dren’s conﬁdence and competence in computing and

current levels of parental involvement. The factors

explored in both surveys included computing experi-

ence, computing use and availability and computing

self-efﬁcacy. The parent survey also explored what

computing activities they already undertake with their

children and what interest they have in these activ-

ities. Complementary questions in the child survey

asked what kind of supports their parents currently

give them in their computing activity.

The questionnaires were circulated in July and

August 2018 through the NPC and other supporters

such as the Computers in Education Society of Ireland

(CESI) and the Irish Department of Rural & Com-

munity Development. They closed having been com-

pleted by 1228 parents and 405 children. In the next

section we discuss the ﬁndings relevant to the work-

shop design.

3.2 Findings of Needs Analysis

3.2.1 Parent Questionnaire

The rationale for the project was clearly supported

by the ﬁndings. Parents clearly recognise the impor-

tance of computing, with 95% of them agreeing that

all children should have an opportunity to learn about

computing in primary school. They also realise that

they have a role to play in this and they want to ac-

tively engage with their children, with 67% agreeing

that learning new things about computers that they

can use with their families is important to them and

78% agreeing that they would like to spend time with

their child when they are learning about computers.

They have multiple motivations for this, with 84% re-

porting that they’d like to help their child understand

what coding does. They also overwhelmingly agreed

that that it is important to teach their child/children

about the role computers play in society (94%) and

that they would like to be able to help their child de-

cide if they would like to be a Computer Scientist, or

work in technology in the future (84%). Despite this

only 15% of parents regularly plan activities in which

they use computers with their children.

Quite a high number of parents, 21%, reported

that they have a qualiﬁcation in computing, however

the level ranges from EDCL right up to PhD level.

On the other hand, 68% have never tried to code with

another 7% reporting that they have tried but not suc-

ceeded. When asked what they used computing de-

vices for at home, passive or ‘consuming’ activities

such as browsing the internet, watching videos, lis-

tening to music, playing games and shopping were

each being carried out by over 70% of respondents

while more creative activities such as desktop pub-

lishing, website development, media creation, cod-

ing and robotics were undertaken by less than 20%.

Despite this, most reported conﬁdence in their use of

computers with 67% agreeing that they are conﬁdent

in their ability to troubleshoot when problems arise

and 77% that they are conﬁdent when trying to learn

new things.

3.2.2 Child Questionnaire

The 405 respondents to the child questionnaire ranged

in age from 5-14 representing all classes in primary

school. Similarly to their parents, children mostly use

computers as consumers rather than creators. Play-

ing games is the most popular activity followed by

viewing videos, listening to music, browsing the In-

ternet and using educational apps. Only 22% re-

port that they have engaged in coding with numbers

for robotics or electronics (5%) and making websites

(1.7%) even lower.

It is clear that parents are already taking a lead

in their children’s computing activity: they monitor

usage with 94% of children saying that their par-

ents limit their screen time and 83% saying their par-

ents decide what activities they do on the computer.

Children also turn to their parents for technical sup-

port. More interestingly, when asked where they

learned about computers, while 55% reported they

learned at school, this was followed very closely by

the 53% who learned at home. In contrast only 17%

reported learning at computer clubs or after-school

classes and 20% have never learned. When asked who

has helped them learn, more children identiﬁed a par-

ent or guardian (67%) than any other category includ-

OurKidsCode: Facilitating Families to Be Creative with Computing

521

ing teachers (58%), and Coderdojo or other computer-

club mentors (23%). As well as parents, children also

identiﬁed siblings (23%) and extended family (12%)

as sources of help providing further evidence of the

importance of the family in this role.

However, when asked what they did with their

parents, the responses once again show a pattern of

mostly passive consumption of technology. While

parents spend time with their children searching for

information on the Internet, listening to music or

watching videos, and particularly when working on

projects or presentations, they do not generally make

websites, code or do robotics or electronics activities.

Children like showing their parents things they make

on the computer (67.6%) and generally enjoy spend-

ing time on computers with their parents.

3.3 Peer Validation

Validation is a checking process that requires the

researcher to consider their role in inﬂuencing the

research process (Cohen, 2002), how data sources

merge and relate to one another (Anzul et al., 2003),

and consider who the audiences will be (Kent, 1996).

Validation from experts, and community groups who

share the researchers’ interests and values, can help

us develop theories and strategies. Validity can be

achieved by peer and community consensus; using a

process which involves the pulling together of shared

concepts and ways of looking at the world to sup-

port judgement on the relevance of claims. To this

end, using opportunistic sampling, n = 5 domain ex-

perts (including teachers, academics, and code club

mentors) were gathered to discuss the ﬁndings of the

questionnaires and share their expertise. The discus-

sion was audio recorded and written observation notes

taken. They conﬁrmed that the ﬁndings were consis-

tent with their experiences and provided veriﬁcation

that the questionnaires provided reliable and valid ev-

idence of a nationally distributed need and demand

for family opportunities to learn creative computing.

3.4 Application of Needs Analysis

The Needs Analysis concluded that, while parents and

children are comfortable with using computers for

more passive activities, they do not have the experi-

ence to engage with more creative computing activi-

ties such as coding, media creation, or physical com-

puting. However, they do report a good level of conﬁ-

dence in their ability to learn new things and have ex-

pressed a clear interest in learning with their families.

This evidence supports a hypothesis that any supports

developed should be collaborative in families and that

families are ready and able to beneﬁt from such in-

terventions. In particular, they informed the project’s

decision to provide creative computing workshops for

families designed to increase conﬁdence and encour-

age self-sustaining communities of practice.

Arising from the conclusions of the Needs Analy-

sis, the project’s objectives were reﬁned:

1. To develop, publish and promote a workshop

model that will help parents/guardians who feel

they lack the skills and knowledge to integrate

technology into their children’s learning activities.

2. To provide direct support for parents/guardians

who wish to encourage children’s engagement

with coding and CT at an early stage of their edu-

cation.

3. To encourage and enable parents/guardians to

learn and develop their own involvement with cre-

ative computing by increasing their conﬁdence

and knowledge.

The following stages of the project were then de-

ﬁned:

1. Design the workshop and workshop supports

2. Pilot the workshop and supports across 3 schools

(1 urban, 2 rural)

3. Reﬁne workshop, develop online resources

4. Train facilitators

(a) 21 NPC Trainers (through our partnership with

the NPC).

(b) 30 other including community workers, Coder-

Dojo mentors and other educators.

5. Facilitators deliver the workshops nationally

Evaluation will be ongoing for all stages of the

project. The sections that follow describe stages 1–

3, namely the design, development, and evaluation of

the workshops

4 WORKSHOP DESIGN &

DEVELOPMENT

4.1 Workshop Model

The workshops follow a Constructionist design with

the participants working in their families towards the

creation of a meaningful tangible artefact with the

aim of both introducing them to computing concepts

and connecting them to each other (Kafai and Burke,

2015). The delivery is informed by theories of learn-

ing such as Social Constructivism (Ackermann, 2001)

where knowledge construction is viewed as a social

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Table 1: Workshop model: phases and rationales.

Phase Description Rationale and relevant Design Principle [DP]

Setup The physical environment is set up to en-

able the rest of the workshop. The facilitator

makes refreshments available to the partici-

pants, distributes materials, and helps ensure

the equipment is working

Debugging issues such as wi-ﬁ connectiv-

ity in this phase avoids interfering with

the workshop activities. Meanwhile partic-

ipants begin to talk casually over refresh-

ments [DP4, DP5].

Introduction The facilitator brieﬂy explains the workshop

model to ground the families.

This sets the scene, and helps focus the par-

ticipants on the process as well as the content

[DP1]

Warm-up and

Ice-breaker

All participants take part in an ‘unplugged’

ice-breaker activity speciﬁc to the creative

activity planned for the session. These activ-

ities are physical (participants stand up and

move around as part of the activity)

This phase introduces the creative task, and

allow families to be more at-ease with each

other, thus facilitating peer learning during

the next phase. [DP5, DP2]

Create A creative technical challenge is given to the

participants, forming the main part of the

workshop. The challenges combine coding

and ‘making’ activities and are designed to

encourage family members to take on differ-

ent roles during the completion of the chal-

lenge.

Families are encouraged to collaborate both

within and between family groups, and to

take on varying roles as they work on the

challenges. [DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4, DP5]

Share Families share their creations in a structured

way (a tournament or showcase)

Bringing the families together at the end

gives a sense of achievement and fulﬁllment

[DP2, DP4]

Reﬂect All participants sit in a circle and share what

they have enjoyed and learned, encouraging

discussion of future plans.

Improves the learning by offering an oppor-

tunity to say out loud what was learnt and

evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Setting

agenda for further work and making commit-

ment for future engagement is a part of this

phase. [DP4, DP5]

and cultural process and social interaction is crucial

to the learning outcomes. Furthermore, Construc-

tivism’s student-centered approach means workshop

leaders are not simply information providers; but fa-

cilitators of students’ knowledge construction. This

lends itself to the project’s aim of participants taking

ownership of their learning thereby increasing their

conﬁdence to pursue further activities.

Based on these theories, and the needs analysis, a

number of design principles (DPs) for the workshops

were identiﬁed:

DP1: The workshops should consist of structured

creative activities leading to the collaborative

making of a meaningful artefact.

DP2: The workshops should provide for creativity

and playfulness, and should tap into the partici-

pants’ expressed desire to use computers as cre-

ative tools.

DP3: The workshops should be collaborative within

families, engaging parents and children together,

supporting inter-generational learning. They must

therefore provide for varying levels of interest and

ability and the wide age range within one family.

DP4: The workshops should be designed to bring

multiple families together, encouraging inter-

family communication and support, and helping

foster self-sustaining communities.

DP5: The workshops should encourage the idea of

families pursuing further activity both as a family

unit and/or along with other families.

In addition, the workshops are intended to be

delivered throughout Ireland by NPC training staff,

CoderDojo mentors, and other interested parties who

will act as facilitators. The delivery is envisaged to

take place in an after-school or similar context, guided

by the facilitators, and a number of speciﬁc challenges

related to this were identiﬁed:

• The workshops must allow for delivery by facili-

tators without extensive technical knowledge

• Support materials must be designed to assist facil-

itators, and help families solve problems with the

tasks.

OurKidsCode: Facilitating Families to Be Creative with Computing

523

Figure 1: Example OurKidsCode Card.

• The workshops must ﬁt within 60–90 minutes

available as after-school activities

• The demands on the facilitators and the physical

space suggest a maximum of 20 participants over

5–6 families.

• The workshops should be suitable for continua-

tion in the home and the necessary materials be

available.

The workshop model was designed accordingly to

consist of six phases, shown in table 1.

A facilitator trained by the project team guides the

families through each phase using support materials:

• The “OurKidsCode cards”, a series of A5 printed

activity, support, and technical cards which pro-

vide both facilitators and participants with guid-

ance. The cards are designed to give participants

clear stepped instructions for activities along with

troubleshooting advice. They also give facilitators

guidelines for running the workshop and provide

rationale and background information as well as

ideas for follow-on activities.

• A supporting website which contains descriptions

of the workshop model, and downloadable copies

of the cards and provides support and encourage-

ment for families to undertake follow-on activi-

ties.

4.2 Sample Workshop Description

The content of the ﬁrst OurKidsCode workshop de-

veloped during the pilot illustrates how the model

works in practice. The workshop sets families the

challenge of making a wearable using the BBC mi-

cro:bit that supports the game rock-paper-scissors,

adapting content from the make:code site (Microsoft,

2018).

The workshop begins with an ‘Icebreaker’ phase

lasting roughly ten minutes in which families par-

ticipate in a rock-scissors-paper tournament, long

enough to ensure that all families are fully relaxed

with each other. This phase of the workshop also en-

sures that the families are familiar with the rules of

activity used in the workshop. In each OurKidsCode

workshop the ‘Icebreaker’ and ‘Share’ phases are in-

tentionally designed to reﬂect and support the speciﬁc

content of the ‘Create’ phase.

Following the ‘Icebreaker’ phase the families

move on to the ‘Create’ phase. This is the longest

phase of the workshop, typically lasting around 45

minutes. The relevant OurKidsCode cards for the

workshop help to structure the activity in this phase

into smaller tasks. This phase is designed to con-

tain both making and coding activities which can take

place in parallel. As well as the aforementioned ad-

vantages that come from creating a tangible artefact,

this allows family members of all ages to make a

meaningful and enjoyable contribution to the work-

shop even if their immediate interest is not in the cod-

ing. In the rock-scissors-paper workshop the artefact

is a wearable wristband containing a micro:bit which

has been programmed to randomly select one of three

images when shaken. Important concepts explored

in the coding activity include the use of if-then con-

structs to represent choice, responding to events and

input, and simple data representation (as randomly

generated numbers are used to select images to dis-

play).

When the families complete their wristbands the

‘Sharing’ phase of the workshop begins. Mirroring

the ‘Icebreaker’ phase, this consists of a second rock-

scissors-paper tournament, this time using the wear-

ables creating in the previous phase. This is typically

a ten to ﬁfteen minute tournament in which families

are able to share and show off their creations.

Finally, the families sit together for the ‘Reﬂect’

phase in which they share their experiences and re-

ﬂect on their learning, typically for up to ten minutes,

before the workshop ends.

5 PILOT WORKSHOP

EVALUATION

The research evaluated whether (a) the workshops had

effectively implemented the identiﬁed design princi-

ples and (b) whether this led to increased conﬁdence

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524

Table 2: Data Collection Instruments.

Instrument Sample Context Brief Description

Pre-

questionnaire

(Quantitative)

Parents Pre-Workshop Contains questions and scales adapted from pre-

validated instruments (Papastergiou, 2008) to capture

conﬁdence and previous experience.

Observation

(Qualitative)

Parents,

Children

Throughout

workshop

Utilising a template to capture observations of parent

and child behaviours (Spradley, 2016b).

FieldNotes

(Qualitative)

Parents,

Children

Throughout

workshop, Post-

workshop

Utilising a template to capture planning, administra-

tion, design, logistics and theoretical issues as well as

practical inﬂuences which impact workshop delivery

written prior to and after workshops.(Emerson et al.,

2011)

Artefacts (Prod-

ucts of the Work-

shop)

Parents,

Children

End of workshop Photographs of artefacts produced during workshops.

(Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007)

Focus Group

(Qualitative)

Parents End of workshop A semi structured conversation (Spradley, 2016a) ex-

ploring learning outcomes. Audio recorded.

Post-

questionnaire

(QUANT + qual)

Parents Immediately

post-workshop

Contains questions and scales adapted from pre-

validated instruments (Papastergiou, 2008; Vekiri,

2010) to capture reactions, learning and future inten-

tions.

Follow-up Sur-

vey (QUANT +

qual)

Parents >2 months post

workshop

Sent >2 months post-workshop to evaluate the extent

of any follow on activity (Kirkpatrick, 2007).

in pursuing similar activities in the future. The instru-

ments were therefore designed to investigate changes

in participants’ conﬁdence by recording self-reported

conﬁdence pre- and post-workshop. They also cap-

tured the participants’ perceptions of the workshop

and changes to their future intentions.

These factors were evaluated using 3-cycle action

research approach. Each cycle led to minor reﬁne-

ments in the implementation process and improve-

ments in the supporting materials. The methods and

results are described below

5.1 Data Collection and Analysis

The evaluation of the workshops utilised multiple

mixed-methods research. The data collection instru-

ments administered are described in Table 2

The instrument developed to assess conﬁdence

was based on the set of items utilised by (Papaster-

giou, 2008) to measure Greek high school students’

self-efﬁcacy with regard to computers and also pre-

viously adapted to investigate teachers’ attitudes to

coding before and after engaging in a creative com-

puting programme(Oldham et al., 2018). The set

consists of ten Likert-type items, each with ﬁve re-

sponses (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”);

they formed a scale with Cronbach’s alpha .89 (Pa-

pastergiou, 2008). Cronbach’s alpha measures the in-

ternal consistency of a set of items, assigning a value

between 0 and 1; higher values indicate greater con-

sistency and hence are deemed to reﬂect greater re-

liability for the resulting scale, with the value of .89

typically regarded as “good” verging on “excellent”

(Gliem and Gliem, 2003). Items include:

• Item 1: I enjoy working with computers

• Item 4: Computers are far too complicated for me

The post-questionnaire also contained 8 items de-

signed to measure the effectiveness of the implemen-

tation of the workshop design principles. These were

adapted from a scale developed to measure percep-

tion of IS Instruction in Greek middle schools with an

‘acceptable’ Cronbach’s alpha of .71 (Vekiri, 2010).

Items include:

• Item 14: One of the things that I liked about the

workshop is that we created our own things.

• Item 18: One of the things that I liked about the

workshop is that I could collaborate and discuss

what we were doing with my family.

Two further items were added to the pre- and post-

questionnaires to assess the impact of the workshop

on future intentions:

• Item 11: I would like to take part in computing

activities with my family in the future

• Item 12: I feel able to organise computing activi-

ties with my family at home

OurKidsCode: Facilitating Families to Be Creative with Computing

525

The follow-up questionnaire was designed to ex-

plore whether the workshop led to any change in be-

haviour among the participants. Results from this are

not yet available.

Data from both questionnaires were entered into

SPSS. The responses to items 1-10, dealing with self-

reported conﬁdence levels pre- and post workshop

were then scored from 1 to 5, or from 5 to 1, so that in

each case the higher number reﬂected greater reported

“conﬁdence”. Frequency distributions and descriptive

statistics were calculated.

With a view to measuring the change in reported

conﬁdence, it was necessary to ﬁnd if the ten items,

or a subset of them, could form a scale. Hence, Cron-

bach’s alpha was computed. For all ten items, the

value was .945, which is deemed “excellent”. The

item scores were added and the totals divided by ten,

to give a value in the range 1 to 5. This was done for

both the pre- and the post- questionnaire.

It remained to compare the pre-workshop and

post-workshop scores. Only thirteen of the eigh-

teen participants fully completed the set of ten items.

Thus, analysis was restricted to the two sets of thir-

teen scores. The Shapiro-Wilk test, used because the

samples were small, indicated that the distributions

could be treated as normal; hence, paired t-tests were

carried out to see if there was a signiﬁcant difference

in the means before and after the cycle. For the ﬁnal

2 items exploring change in future intentions, a simi-

lar process was followed and results are displayed and

discussed in section 5.3.1.

With regard to the 8 items exploring the percep-

tions of the workshop, the 16 responses to these ques-

tions were scored from 1 to 5, or from 5 to 1, so that in

each case the higher number reﬂected greater reported

more positive perceptions. As the sample was small

and the questions diverse, the mean response for each

question was calculated and displayed in ﬁgure 3.

5.2 Recruitment and Implementation

In order to provide a diverse range of relevant cases

we used purposive maximum-variation sampling to

recruit 3 primary schools (1 Urban, 2 Rural). The re-

cruitment of the participants then used convenience

sampling and took place through the parent teacher

associations (PTAs) of the selected schools

Three pilot workshops have taken place to date,

two in an urban school and one across 2 rural schools

between June and October 2018. In total eighteen

families (18 parents and 35 children aged 5-13) par-

ticipated across the three workshops .

• Workshop 1. Large Urban School – 6 families (6

parents, 13 children)

• Workshop 2. 2 small Rural schools combined – 5

families (5 parents, 10 children)

• Workshop 3. Large Urban school - 7 families (7

parents, 12 children)

5.3 Findings

5.3.1 Quantitative Results

Out of a total of 18 parent participants 4 were male

and 14 female. They ranged in age from 37 to 63 with

14 out of the 18 aged 43-53.

The two sets of self-reported conﬁdence scores are

presented graphically in Figure 2 with each line rep-

resenting a parent participant. It can be seen that the

initial levels were rather high, with only three par-

ticipants returning a pre-cycle score below the mid-

point of the scale. Two participants actually returned

slightly lower scores at the end than at the beginning

of the cycle; of the other eleven, one stayed the same

and ten returned increased scores. However, the mean

score rose from 3.44 to 3.74, and the difference is sig-

niﬁcant at the .05 level (t = 2.835, df = 12, p = .015).

Figure 2: Changes in self-reported conﬁdence.

As can be seen from Figure 3, the items exploring

the participants’ perception of the workshop provided

strong conﬁrmation of the successful implementation

of the design principles with the mean responses to all

but one of the items scoring between 4 (‘agree’) and

5 (‘strongly agree’).

With regard to the two items measuring the fu-

ture intentions of the workshop, 14 participants re-

sponded. Unsurprisingly, as the participants were vol-

unteers, 9 already strongly agreed before the work-

shop that they would like they would like to take part

CSEDU 2019 - 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

526

Figure 3: Workshop Perceptions (means, n=16).

in computing activities with their families in the fu-

ture. Therefore the rise was not statistically signif-

icant. However, as can be seen from Figure 4, post-

workshop the number strongly agreeing had increased

to 12. Of the other 2, 1 had increased from ‘neither

agree nor disagree’ to ‘agree’ and one had dropped

from ‘agree’ to ‘neither agree nor disagree’.

Figure 4: Desire to partake in future family computing ac-

tivities.

Figure 5: Perceived ability to organise family computing

activities.

When asked whether they felt able to organise

such activities at home with their families 10 out of

the 14 respondents reported feeling more able post-

workshop with 4 remaining the same. Here the mean

rose from 2.86 to 3.93 a signiﬁcant rise at the 0.5 level

(Figure 5).

5.3.2 Qualitative Results

Quantitative results were supplemented by the qual-

itative ﬁndings of the structured observations and

focus groups. The observations recorded consider-

able excitement and laughter culminating during the

‘Share’ phase where participants had a chance to

show off their creations. Another important observa-

tion was the importance of the ‘making’ element (see

Figure 6). Some child participants were observed to

be more engaged by ‘making’ than computing, and

providing it maintained a connection with the task.

This enhanced collaboration and dialogue within the

families.

During the focus group comments were over-

whelmingly positive: “A great idea - I feel very

disconnected from my kids’ computer use”, “Thor-

oughly enjoyed it, time ﬂew. We have already decided

to make our own Scratch game together at midterm.”

Parents commented about the positive use of comput-

ing comparing it favourably to their usual interactions

giving examples of disagreements about screen time

and worrying about online usage. Many remarks were

made about increased conﬁdence as a result of the ac-

tivity, supporting the ﬁnding from the questionnaires

that overall conﬁdence increased.

OurKidsCode: Facilitating Families to Be Creative with Computing

527

Figure 6: Wearable.

5.4 Discussion

The pilot workshops did result in a number of changes

to the initial design. The project aimed to increase

conﬁdence in the parents so that they could undertake

similar activities at home. Therefore it was particu-

larly important that they did not feel that they needed

a facilitator to complete the activities. For the ﬁrst

workshop a Powerpoint presentation and demonstra-

tions of the steps of the activity were projected but

it was observed that the participants then overly re-

lied on the facilitator for instruction. For the second

workshop we designed and developed the OurKid-

sCode Cards - A5 cards (described in Section 4).

Participants were observed to be much more self-

sufﬁcient and independent in their learning with their

support. Feedback during the focus group conﬁrmed

their value to the parents.

The generally positive results indicate that the

workshop design effectively implemented the design

principles indicated by the Needs Analysis. There

is also evidence that taking part in the workshop

achieved its aim of strengthening the participants con-

ﬁdence and readiness to partake in family computing

activities. However, some caveats must be entered.

First, the number of participants was small and we

cannot assume that the results would generalise to

other groups. Also we currently are not in a position

to know whether the rise in conﬁdence is sustained

and whether it has, in fact, led to any further action.

We are hopeful that the results of the follow-up ques-

tionnaire early in 2019 will give us some insight into

these issues.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This paper has described the OurKidsCode project

and the design, development and evaluation of the

workshops. The evaluation aimed primarily to inves-

tigate the effect of the strategy on the participants’

conﬁdence in partaking in creative computing activi-

ties with their families. Positive results were found for

the sample investigated in whom the mean conﬁdence

level rose signiﬁcantly. Also, participants reported

satisfaction with and enjoyment of the strategy, partic-

ularly the inter-family collaboration and the creation

of concrete artefacts. Conﬁdence in their ability to

organise such activities also rose signiﬁcantly. Over-

all, therefore, it appears that the model has potential

for supporting parents as they engage their children in

computing and computational thinking.

Training of OurKidsCode facilitators has begun

with the aim of a national rollout of the programme in

2019. Twenty-one NPC facilitators have been trained

so far in the delivery of the workshop along with 17

others consisting of community workers, coderDojo

mentors, teachers and other educators. More training

sessions are planned for 2019 and further evaluation

and updating with be ongoing as the workshops are

delivered. Funding has been secured to design and

develop a 4-session weekly programme for families

who wish to deepen their involvement. It is hoped that

these will also lead to sustainable intra-family com-

munities of creative computing. The project website

is being further developed to support these activities.

We anticipate that the design framework that we

have developed along with our ﬁndings on parents’

current capacities, conﬁdence and interest will be of

interest to other researchers and practitioners.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is funded by Science Foundation Ire-

land and administered by the School of Computer Sci-

ence and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin with the

support of the National Parents Council (Primary).

Workshops have been supported by Microsoft Ireland.

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