Nominalismo y valorismo

This lesson gives some theory behind website addresses and introduces students to HTTP. It then shows students how to add links using HTML and then how to put these into a list to create a menu. It also shows students how to style these lists to look more like a "standard" menu.

29 https://www.tutorialspoint.com

30 https://www.w3schools.com/

31 https://www.codecademy.com/

3.5 conclusion

Databases

This is an unplugged lesson which introduces students to the concept of a database. This is done through making a class database with information on things like name, hair colour, age, favourite book, etc. Students will then be introduced to a uniquely de- signed Database-query language which is based on SQL (Structured Query Language). Students can then query their classes database and learn how to write statements and display results.

3.5

c o n c l u s i o n

Overall, 80 hours of content have been developed for CS2Go. The hope is that this is just the beginning and that further content will be developed in the future. Specifi- cally this will include: expansion of the Web Development module including more un- plugged lessons and web development tutorials, the creation of an App Development module, further Scratch tutorials and more advanced Python programming lessons. The content created will also be altered and expanded based on further research, in- put from teachers and students as well as any other developments in teaching methods and content.

4

A S S E S S M E N T

Assessment is one of the key factors when designing and developing courses within any level of education. For the assessment of this course, several surveys and feedback forms were created along with a problem-solving test. This chapter will describe the development and content of these various assessments. They will all be referred to in future chapters when discussing the feedback and results from the various studies developed.

4.1

g e n e r a l a s s e s s m e n t f o r m s

One of the main goals of this project was to develop lessons that would be interesting to students, teach them about CS and be easily usable for teachers with little to no CS background. It is clear that the assessment of whether this was achieved or not should not be done just by the developers or others who work in the areas of CS or Education. The main audience of CS2Go is secondary school teachers and students. To see whether the developed lessons were beneficial, engaging and easily usable a series of feedback forms were designed. These were used to collect relevant data from those who taught or were taught the lessons during the duration of this project. In this section, these forms and surveys are described.

4.1.1

p e r s o na l s u r v e y

In the first week of the course, students complete a personal survey to obtain demo- graphic data and other personal data such as age, gender, and previous program- ming/Computer Science experience. As we developed the course, we were interested to see how students from different backgrounds and demographics might engage with the lessons. To do this, we needed to collect the information on a range of topics anonymously. To do this, a personal survey was developed and teachers assigned students random identifiers (such as DGS01) which students then used to complete all of the feedback described in this section. The full personal survey can be found in AppendixG.

4.1 general assessment forms

4.1.2

l e s s o n f e e d b a c k

One of the main goals in this early stage of course development was to see whether stu- dents enjoyed the lessons and whether they felt they learned something from the class. Upon completion of each lesson or class, students filled out an anonymous feedback form. All of the forms had questions which asked about whether they had enjoyed the lesson/class, what they had enjoyed/not enjoyed and what they had learned. In addition, individual lessons had unique multiple-choice questions based on the topic covered. These differed for each form and some had no multiple-choice questions. These questions can be seen in Chapter6 when the results of the year-long school

study are discussed. A sample survey of the generic questions can be found in Ap- pendixH.

An anonymous end-of course survey with similar types of questions to those shown in AppendixHwas also prepared and administered after the pilot study as described in Chapter5. This survey wasn’t used during the year-long study as it wasn’t needed

as the individual class feedback being the focus.

4.1.3

e x a m q u e s t i o n s

During my teaching in the main year of study (2017-18), as described in Chapter 6,

the Mathematics teacher of the school requested some questions to supplement the students’ Christmas exams. These are presented below with sample answers that were supplied to the teacher. Although these were developed for a specific purpose, it shows the potential for a more standard exam based on the content of CS2Go.

Q1. In your own words, describe what Computer Science is (2-3 lines). Sample Answers:

• Computer Science is concerned with the study of everything to do with computers and our relationship with them.

• Solving real world problems using the power of computing technology.

• Anything like programming, coding, website design, app design etc. you could award half marks as it’s not wrong but only a part of the whole. The above definition is what they were given in class and is available to them in the slides.

Q2. What are the four parts that make up Computational Thinking? If you can’t think of them describe them.

4.1 general assessment forms

Sample Answer: 1) Abstraction - Pulling out specific differences to make one solution work for multiple problems 2) Decomposition - Answer: breaking a problem up into smaller parts 3) Pattern matching - looking for similarities between problems/solutions 4) Algorithm – Set/se- quence/list of instructions/commands/directions of how to do something/how to solve a problem.

Q3. What is an algorithm?

Sample Answers: Set/sequence/list of instructions/commands/directions of how to do some- thing/how to solve a problem.

Q4. Write out an algorithm for how to make a cup of tea, make sure to include all relevant steps.

Sample Answer: Many correct answers for this. One is below, so long as you could make a cup of tea from the instructions without too many assumptions that’s fine.

• Find the kettle

• Fill the kettle up to the fill line • Place it on the holder

• Flick the switch to start boiling the water

• Whilst the water is boiling, find the mug cupboard

• Choose a mug that you like and is big enough for your drink • Place the mug on the side

• Now find the cupboard that contains the tea Choose your favourite type of tea, it could be Barry’s, Herbal, Earl Grey etc.

• Place the teabag into the mug

• When the kettle has boiled, add water 3/4 of the way up the mug. • Get the milk and sugar from the fridge and cupboard respectively. • Add the milk and then add the sugar, stir in using a spoon. • Remove the teabag when it is as strong as you wan i to be.

Q5. The following text has been encrypted using a Caesar Shift Cipher, decrypt it. Hint: Note the individual letter

Ymnx nx f xjhwjy rjxxflj, bjqq itsj ktw knsinsl ny!

Sample Answer: This is a secret message, well done for finding it! (the key is 5)

4.2 view of computer science survey

4.1.4

t e a c h e r f e e d b a c k

Along with the student feedback it was vital to get information from teachers about how usable the lessons were, whether they needed more help or resources and whether they felt the students learned and engaged with the topic. This information could then be used to improve the course and develop more content. Teachers were given digital forms to fill out after teaching lessons to their class. An example of a form can be found in AppendixIas well as athttps://goo.gl/forms/HkdRSDYIEc9Xkxxj2.

4.2

v i e w o f c o m p u t e r s c i e n c e s u r v e y

One of the outcomes we hoped would occur after students were taught with lessons developed for CS2Go was a change in students’ opinions of CS. Many students wouldn’t have been taught much, if any, CS prior to Transition Year and so it was a perfect op- portunity to survey a large number of students’ opinions. To do this, a survey was designed based on a survey developed by Taub, Armoni, and Ben-Ari [89]. It was

administered before and after the course and was designed to better understand and evaluate students’ views of what Computer Science is, what it involves, and who a computer scientist is. The same survey was used for both of the schools study as discussed in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 and can be found in Appendix J. The same

questions were used with the first-year undergraduate study discussed in Chapter

7 with the exception of Q1; this was removed as all of the students were currently

studying CS.

4.3

c o m p u tat i o na l t h i n k i n g a s s e s s m e n t

4.3.1

g oa l s o f t h e a s s e s s m e n t

One of the areas that had to be analysed to judge the success and impact of CS2Go was whether it improved students CT skills. To make this possible there was a clear need to find or develop a Computational Thinking assessment. It had to fit a number of requirements, namely:

• Be applicable to the target age range (15-17 years old)

• Allow for differentiation between strong and weaker students (i.e. have harder and easier questions)

4.3 computational thinking assessment

• The test needed to allow students to complete the questions without any prior knowledge

• Be completed within a 40-minute class time

• Allow for a pre- and post-test of similar difficulty and content • Test students’ Computational Thinking skills

4.3.2

c t a s s e s s m e n t

Assessment of CT is in it’s infancy and as such, there aren’t many methods for educa- tors to test it. As it is seen more and more as a central skill for students to have, the lack of assessment options can cause difficulties for educators. However, some work has been done in the area.

Of note is an effort to develop a Computational Thinking test called the Computa- tional Thinking Test (CTt) and another called Dr. Scratch. Dr Scratch analyses Scratch projects to deliver a CT score based on a number of different metrics [67]. This is a

great tool and we recommend it as a tool to analyse Scratch projects developed in one module of CS2Go. As it works exclusively with Scratch, this didn’t suit our purposes to study students "general" CT skills pre-course and post-course. The CTt has been developed as a series of multiple-choice questions that are presented online in either a "maze" or "canvas" interface. There a number of factors which define the questions [32]. The group have analysed these two metrics (CTt and Dr Scratch) alongside the

Bebras problems [82]. They found that the CTt was partially convergent with the other

two assessments. They claim this is to be expected as the three assess CT but from dif- ferent perspectives. One strength they believe that the CTt has is that it can be done in "pure pre-test conditions". This can allow early detection of problems but also doesn’t allow for contextualised assessment. This is a strength of the Bebras problems, which have "real-life" questions but they also claim the "psychometric properties of some of the problems are skill far off being demonstrated".

With this being said, we felt that, from assessing various forms of assessment for CT that exist, both through the systematic literature review described in Chapter 2 and

through interactions with other researchers and educators that the Bebras problems would provide a good basis for a CT assessment.

4.3 computational thinking assessment

4.3.3

b e b r a s p r o b l e m s

Bebras is an international competition which aims to promote CS and CT among school students at all ages. Participants are usually supervised by teachers and the challenge is performed at schools using computers or mobile devices.

As part of their work in schools, the PACT group are involved in the Irish version of this test and have designed and used Bebras problems in order to provide teachers with resources to introduce students to CT. They are designed to be 3-minute-long questions and require no prior knowledge of programming or CS topics. All the problems are linked to topics in computing such as Cryptography, Trees etc. and this allows them to be used to introduce students to these topics without students even realising they are learning them.

The fact that the Bebras problems are designed to test CT skills means they are well suited to assess students CT skills before and after the course. Gouws, Bradshaw, and Wentworth [33] previously used the South African version in a similar manner and it

was this that inspired the development of our own CT assessment. Other studies have also been carried out on the Bebras problems to investigate both their effectiveness and to compare them to other Computational Thinking tests [24,42, 43,91]. These

studies have shown that Bebras problems can be an effective tool in promoting CT and problem-solving skills [24]. Work has also begun in comparing them to other

worldwide tests such as PISA [42] as well as analysing the underlying psychometric

structure of the problems [43]. The results are promising but are in the early stages

and more work is required in this area.

4.3.4

m e t h o d o l o g y

The current format of the Bebras challenge doesn’t suit as a comparative test as the questions change each year. The challenge is often conducted on PCs and we wanted to allow teachers to do it through both pen and paper or online if desired. It was de- cided that 13 questions would be used in each test, with students allowed 35 minutes to complete them. This considers both the 3-minute design of the question as well as the fact that some of the questions are designed for a younger age group than the target demographic. It was hoped that each test would be as close as possible to each other in terms of difficulty level as well as question topic and type. To do this, many questions from Bebras challenges across the world were examined and critiqued.

4.3 computational thinking assessment

The questions used in the UK challenges were deemed most appropriate and the contents of the test were sources from the 2015 and 2016 challenges. For the target age group (15-17-year olds) the UK challenge involves 18 multiple-choice questions over 40 minutes. As explained above this was adjusted slightly for our purposes to be shorter but also allowed for some non-multiple-choice questions as well. The first criteria for the tests was to ensure that they were as close in terms of difficulty level as possible. The UK Bebras challenge is broken into six age groups as presented in Table

4.1.

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