Variables o categorías de análisis

Worksheet Design Overview

The intervention was a combination of two worksheets (for two lab periods) and a survey. Both worksheets had students write the code to draw a simple picture of a character using Processing. One of the two worksheets contained varying possibilities for creative choice. While constructing a picture, students were given multiple choice options on how to make the different features (shapes and colors) of the character they were drawing. For each feature, they could pick from three provided options or pick to create their own feature. Option ‘D’ was always an option for the students to pick “other” and design their own feature if they did not like our suggestions, as seen in Figure 10. The second worksheet involved the students typing specific instructions step-by-step (no creative choice allowed), as seen in Figure 11. The former worksheet is referred to as the creative worksheet, CC worksheet, or students having “options”, whereas the latter is the non-creative, no-CC worksheet, or students following “steps.

Figure 10: The First Instruction for Selecting the Background Color for the Creative Choice Worksheet.

Figure 11: The First Instruction for Making the Background Color for the Non-Creative Worksheet.

Constraints: Reducing Complexity

In order to reduce the number of variables, the worksheets for our first intervention were not designed to be very challenging - they were merely guided steps showing students what they could do with the commands they had learned thus far. We reserved more complex assignments for Intervention Two, so this one could focus on isolating creativity as much as possible. One of the fears of making more complex assignments was that if students were stuck on a problem on one of the two worksheets for whatever reason, they might automatically like the other more. Therefore, we chose to give them base code for the no-CC and the CC assignment (aside from the “other” option students could choose) to try and isolate creative choice as the only difference instead of difficulty.

Constraints: Giving Each Treatment to Every Student

For our first intervention, we wanted to gather student opinions after giving each student both assignments to choose between, as opposed to comparing class averages after assigning one treatment to each class. While there is value in looking at trends in classes as a whole (and we did do this in the second intervention) there are also issues

in this approach, as each class is different in student composition and abilities; we wanted to see what a student would prefer when given two assignments (one creative and one not). Due to this desire, we chose to have the worksheets based on reviewing material they had previously learned instead of teaching new material (saving this also for the second intervention). If we taught new material to the students we could not apply both treatments since students would already know the material by the time they were given treatment number two. For this reason, and other simplifying effects, we chose to give two worksheets which were as similar as possible, working with identical concepts, aside from the creative choice.

Figure 12: The Two Images Made by Each Student During Intervention One (Though One of the Images Varied Depending on Which One Was on the Creative Choice Worksheet for a Given Student).

Since each student was to get both treatments, the worksheetsdid need to have more variables than merely creativity. We had to have students making different pictures each week to prevent boredom and dislike of the second worksheet. We chose to have students make a mouse one week and a snowman the other (Figure 12). To help mitigate the necessary variables, we made sure each picture had the same number of shapes and color selections. We also made sure, out of the four classes, that two were given a snowman as the CC assignment and mouse as the no-CC, and two classes were

given the mouse as the CC and a snowman as the no-CC assignment. We also made sure that two of the classes were given the CC assignment first and the other two classes were given the no-CC assignment first in case students were biased to prefer the most recent assignment they completed. Each worksheet took one lab period, so they completed one worksheet the first week and the second worksheet, followed by the survey, the second week. By making sure the classes were flipped in which type of worksheet they were given first, we could minimize skews due to students preferring/only remember the most recent assignments. We also were sure to isolate why students chose worksheet preferences to help mitigate the variables introduced by provided different images (a mouse and a snowman) each week. We were sure to evaluate if students made preference choices based on ‘unrelated aesthetics’ or due to creativity levels, which is discussed further in survey design.

References

The worksheets for the creative choice mouse and snowman and the non-creative choice mouse and snowman can be found in Appendices C, D, E, and F respectively. Survey Design

The survey was broken into two portions. The first half of the survey asked students which worksheet they preferred in general, not specifically asking about the creative choice aspect of the worksheet. After making their selection, they were asked to check reasons for which they preferred that worksheet from a predefined list of options. This was so we could analyze how important creativity versus design or superfluous reasons were for liking an assignment. We opted to give checkboxes, despite the risk of implanting ideas or skewing student thinking, because sometimes the fifth graders needed prompting to answer questions. We also had them say which was the most important reason they checked, and also gave them an “other” option where they could write whatever they wanted in order to try to offset the rigidity of checkboxes.

The second half of the survey asked students specifically if they preferred having options more or following steps more, regardless of which worksheet they preferred as a whole. They were given space for a free-response explanation as to why they had this preference. The free-response question was to see the self-reported descriptions of their preferences without skewing or biasing them with predefined options.

The survey can be found in Appendix G.