Lessons - Githubissues

What's the problem?

Wordplay, as a programming language and sharing platform, does little to help teachers structure, plan, and teach computing. Here are a small --- and likely incomplete --- list of likely needs, that aren't yet met:

Identifying ideas for lessons that teach particular computer science learning standards around the world
Finding lessons localized in particular languages
Finding lessons appropriate for particular levels of difficulty and prior knowledge
Finding and adapting a lesson
Having students work through a lesson and be able to link progress to a lesson, and share their progress with their teachers
Tracking progress that multiple students have made together

There are likely many other requirements that we have not gathered that teachers might have. This problem statement isn't done until we have thoroughly investigate their needs, and partnered with them to envision this feature.

What's the design idea?

One possible idea is to create the notion of a lesson, from which teachers could assemble units. Lessons would teach particular computing, math, science, or language arts concepts, could be shared publicly, etc. They might follow a similar interaction model as the tutorial, but included embedded assessments.

Design specification

Reporters can leave this blank. Designers should write a detailed, precise description of what is to be built. If images are necessary to convey this precisely, make sure to include image descriptions, so everyone can see what is in the image. Do not link to external documents; everything should be embedded here. Once the design is approved, we will remove the needs design tag and replace it with the buildable tag, signalling that it can be built.

I'll be working on this as a designer

I am also interested in working on this as a designer.

Good luck @mrawat201 and @rylouie, make sure to collaborate and let us know how we can help!

Hello @mrawat201 @rylouie, I am interested to work on this project. Would you guys mind to work together?

@patriciacindy Yes! We can catch you up tomorrow during work time.

Research #1

Ober, T. M., Cheng, Y., Coggins, M. R., Brenner, P., Zdankus, J., … Gonsalves, P. (2022). Charting a path for growth in middle school students’ attitudes toward computer programming. Computer Science Education, 34(1), 4–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2134677

The study addresses the importance of middle school as a formative period in shaping students' attitudes towards computer programming, which can influence career decisions and workforce diversity in STEM fields. Middle is crucial for shaping student’s attitudes toward subjects, including programming. Positive attitudes towards this subject can plan a crucial role in addressing workforce diversity within STEM careers. As a result, programs or interventions that seek to foster interest within these subjects can have big impacts on students.

The study found that gender and minority differences had a significant role in shaping student attitudes. There were differences in interests towards computer programming. The authors suggest that events and initiatives aiming to encourage students to pursue interest in STEM subjects can be important in addressing disparities in attitudes, and fostering a more inclusive learning environment for underrepresented communities of people.

Despite differences in attitudes, the study also found that there was growth in attitudes towards computer programming after using an online platform to increase exposure of programming to students. By understanding the factors influencing students' attitudes towards computer programming, educators can develop targeted interventions and initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion within schools to help inspire students to pursue careers in STEM. These may involve implementing curriculum changes, providing professional development opportunities for teachers, and fostering supportive learning environments that cater to the needs of all students, regardless of gender or minority group. From this study, we can conclude that underrepresented youth should be aware about the impact of programming, and be inspired to pursue this subject even further. One idea could be to have an introduction for students when first logging into the Wordplay platform, informing them about the potential of programming, and the cool outcomes it can produce in hopes of encouraging them to pursue it in the future.

Research #2

Tracie Evans Reding and Brian Dorn. 2017. Understanding the "Teacher Experience" in Primary and Secondary CS Professional Development. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER '17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 155–163. https://doi.org/10.1145/3105726.3106185

This study covers 10 teachers, and their insights throughout a 10 week CS development program. Two key factors that consistently correlate with student achievement are teacher instructional practices and teacher content knowledge. This is a problem for primary and secondary schools. Because most teachers have never been exposed to cs-content, due to lack of prioritization in the US. Professional Development (PD) has changed in the last few years and in this study, there were hopes of answering two questions: RQ1: What are the cognitive themes that arise throughout an effective Computer Science Education PD program? RQ2: What are the affective patterns that arise throughout an effective Computer Science Education PD program? The interviewees were teachers that had a wide range of experiences from different disciplines, 2-20 years of working as a teacher, and a primary focus on stem based teachers. One of the insights throughout the study was that emotions are important in learning because they can either impede or motivate learning. Problem based learning was a new approach for some of the teachers. Teachers began to be more familiar with PBL, shifting from learning about it to planning it and implementing it. In addition, the online course portion of teachers became more familiar with Scratch, and comments about it became more specific on how to implement it in the classrooms. They were able to make connections between lessons and learning back in the classrooms. However, some aspects such as collaborative projects had mixed opinions. This explains that although they were all learning the same thing, people have different styles of learning and this reflects on how they instruct and create their own lessons.

One of the most important aspects of the study was that teachers all had their students in mind when going through the program. They were excited for students because lessons can be engaging through how fun it was from their personal experiences . The teacher's outlook on student success depended on how they felt about their lesson planning, and if they were satisfied with it. One way to implement this into a learning platform to help teachers, is implementing problem based learning examples in lessons and in projects. This is to encompass different types of learning students can have, compared to the standard of memorization, without knowing what the code really does.

Khansa, J., & Bahous, R. (2021). Challenges of teaching Syrian refugee children in Lebanon: teachers’ insights. Intercultural Education, 32(3), 280–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2020.1867509

In this paper, Khansa, J. and Bahour, R share insights on deep interviews conducted on teachers of Syrian refugees discussing the psychological and physical needs of their students. First it opens up with the state of Syria at this time. People have been deprived of basic needs (clean water, education, and a safe environment) with 5.5 million in Damascus that were deprived of clean water due to conflict Unicef (2017). Before the conflict and wars, education was a top priority for the country, with enrollment in primary schools and 90% literacy rate. Now in 2017, 43% of school aged Syrian refugee children were out of school. School types in Lebanon are divided into two main entities: private and public. The public caters to around 30% of the population and is free of cost. One solution to cope with the increase of Syrian refugee children has been public schools offering afternoon shifts to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills. However, there are a lot of challenges within education. Children with refugee backgrounds may have effects of trauma both physically and psychologically. Many have limited schooling due to fleeing or lack of time to spend on education. As a result, it’s challenging to adapt to a new culture, especially when one is constantly moving to different locations constantly and don’t have time to settle mentally or physically. For teachers, they report a lack of professional development of students that can come from more diverse backgrounds. Students coming from refugee backgrounds require specialized programs tailored to a specific language or social need. Teachers that work with these students shared the phrases of describing student emotional needs in love, care, attention and the absence of physical and verbal abuse. This speaks to the accessibility of programming, and how some students around the world grow up in environments where it’s difficult to learn, or be in a learning environment. From this, an important aspect that can be translated into the platform is acknowledgement about how differing learning programming can be around the world, and aiming to offer a wider range of lessons for students that are in the midst of learning basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Vartiainen, H., Nissinen, S., Pöllänen, S., & Vanninen, P. (2018). Teachers’ Insights Into Connected Learning Networks: Emerging Activities and Forms of Participation. AERA Open, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418799694

This article talks about a design oriented project conducted by teachers in their classroom and the insights regarding that to connected learning environments. One of the reasons this study was conducted was that the education system often fails to connect with large educational opportunities that exist outside of the classroom. With a predefined system of learning, it doesn’t acknowledge the diverse backgrounds and interests of the students, causing a constraint of creativity in the classroom.

The article also talks about connected learning. Connected learning acknowledges that the students are members of multiple communities, and students have access to a variety of resources. As a result, it can give more freedom, and thus more passion and curiosity for learning assignments.

images_large_10 1177_2332858418799694-fig1

This figure illustrates how design oriented learning helps collaborative environments with students and touches on background and experiences that students have had before.

Overall, this source contributes to the understanding of connected learning by exploring how teachers can promote meaningful participation and inquiry across spaces, leveraging design-oriented pedagogy to connect learners with their interests, communities, and learning ecologies.

From this paper, a concept that can be expanded on to helping teachers with coding lessons would be to create assignments that have students reflect on their past experiences. This allows them to have a creative outlet, and encourages them to explore the concepts taught even deeper, and how they can use their own background to deliver results that they want. This helps encourage more passion and helps imprint the core lessons of programming through more familiarity within themselves.

S. Lee-Cultura, K. Sharma and M. N. Giannakos, "Multimodal Teacher Dashboards: Challenges and Opportunities of Enhancing Teacher Insights Through a Case Study," in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, vol. 17, pp. 181-201, 2024, doi: 10.1109/TLT.2023.3276848 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10126127

This paper talks about dashboards on the teacher’s side. This helps track students progress and can help teachers make decisions on their teaching methods. The dashboard that is used in the study is one that can track many characteristics on top of assignment scores such as heart rate, and eye tracking.

Addressing some of the benefits of using this dashboard, teachers are able to pinpoint which students are struggling, which is especially helpful for more quiet students or ones that don’t reach out to the teacher. The article also talks about how powerful data can be, in painting stories of student experiences. It can provide incentives for students to track their progress throughout with the data being presented to them.

A teacher interviewed writes, “If you look at engagement, it is very important from the classroom perspective. It is always important to keep all the students engaged. So if they are really getting engaged in a certain activity, at a certain point, that might be useful to know, and incorporate such things in other activities...for learning activity design and redesign. The opposite is also true.” (Quote 10, D5).

The dashboard helps teachers figure out what is really going on in their classroom, as the numbers from the data collected illustrate patterns or outliers of student performance.

One of the challenges of this dashboard is technological constraint, and lack of data literacy. This means that it may be difficult for teachers to interpret results, and can be used only by communities that have the budget and money to adopt these dashboards.

From the insights of this paper, having a dashboard for teachers allows them to see the student’s progress and pinpoint what areas need improvement. This is a great tool to have in order to receive feedback week by week and continuously improve lesson plans.

Yadav, A., Gretter, S., Hambrusch, S., & Sands, P. (2016). Expanding computer science education in schools: understanding teacher experiences and challenges. Computer Science Education, 26(4), 235–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2016.1257418

This paper provides an overview of computer science in primary and secondary schools. In the UK and US, there are challenges in a lack of qualified teachers and negative associations with computing. For example, many teacher certification pathways for CS are lacking or there isn’t a solidified pathway because of the various boot camps and courses that are offered. Even though there is a demand for teachers, there’s a shortage of qualified CS teachers globally.

As a result, many schools face problems in offering CS courses because of the shortage. Specifically, defining the CS curriculum, recruiting teachers that come from general education backgrounds, and designing certification programs is an obstacle preventing the training of CS teachers.

In the paper’s study, 24 high school CS teachers from the USA are gathered, and are interviewed. This includes an online survey, followed by an in person or phone interview. The question that wanted to be answered is, “What challenges do CS teachers face in the classroom, and what support systems would be helpful?”

For results, teachers overall faced various challenges when teaching. Becoming proficient in the content and pedagogical aspects of computer science was especially difficult. In addition, keeping up with the constantly changing current needs and updates of what is happening within the computer science world was an obstacle. All of these aspects were considered worse for beginning teachers.

On the other hand, there were also teachers that may have experience in programming, but don’t have the teaching background. There isn’t a level of threshold to become a CS teacher so the backgrounds that people come from to instruct are very diverse. For those that were regular teachers before, they may have to self teach themselves CS content. This was especially challenging because they would have to work in solitude without peers to support them. There are usually teacher support groups within schools, like math teachers grouping up with one another, but there are times when CS teachers are the only ones teaching content so they are stuck alone. This can be discouraging without a support network, and having to do everything alone.

The final challenge talked about was IT equipment. Computer lab equipment can be outdated, and there can be a slow process of staff updating software. There is not an equal access of resources, reflected in each classroom and can cause gaps in learning for students.

This speaks to how much of a challenge that this issue is. Teachers come from various diverse backgrounds, and face challenges in both first trying to learn a new concept, and also trying to teach it in a way that makes sense and encourages students. This can give insight on how important feedback, support, and a network of CS teachers can be. Maybe adding something to help foster a community of teachers online to connect and encourage each other when lesson planning could be a powerful feature to have.

https://www.techsmart.codes/platform/

I conducted some research on a coding learning platform called TechSmart. This platform is designed for teachers that have a dashboard where they can customize lesson plans with a lot of flexibility, and can see student progress throughout the course.

For the gradebook aspect of the platform, many of the programming assignments are autograded if they can pass tests set in each assignment. A full green circle marks that the student completed and passed all of the tests. A partially filled green circle indicates that the student is on the right track but hasn’t completed all of the test. In addition, this could also mean that the student took too many lines to pass the test, and that there could be more efficient alternatives for producing results for an assignment.

Aside from auto graded assignments, there are also bigger projects that the teacher can go in and manually grade. Throughout the gradebook, teachers are able to look through, and find summarized data week by week. For example, the completion rate of assignments and view individual student progress to ensure nobody is falling behind. In terms of lesson plan, the dashboard presents learning content in block form that teachers can drag, adjust, and switch with will. For example, a 45 minute block that contains a lesson on for loops can be moved around a time block schedule and placed anywhere depending on what the teacher wants. The blocks are labeled as instructional, demo, practice, homework, and project assignment. This offers a lot of flexibility and versatility in how teachers can design their lesson plans. Furthermore, there is live support on the bottom of the right of the screen which pops up a messenger chat with a TechSmart employee to ensure everything goes smoothly, and TechSmart can receive feedback on the fly.

TechSmart's platform has been implemented within 95+ schools, including in Washington and is something that designers could take inspiration from with the flexibility and intuitiveness of lesson blocks that can move around.

Guido Rößling, Mike Joy, Andrés Moreno, Atanas Radenski, Lauri Malmi, Andreas Kerren, Thomas Naps, Rockford J. Ross, Michael Clancy, Ari Korhonen, Rainer Oechsle, and J. Ángel Velázquez Iturbide. 2008. Enhancing learning management systems to better support computer science education. SIGCSE Bull. 40, 4 (December 2008), 142–166. https://doi.org/10.1145/1473195.1473239

Many instructors and universities are moving to the use of learning management systems. However, LMS can be short on needs specific to computer science courses. Teachers have continued to develop computer based software tools in order to help with management.

LMS for computer science specifically are: “At least two main types of such systems can be identified: systems that check programming exercises (the deliverable is software) and systems that check conceptual knowledge in a specific topic.” Learning systems should support deeper cognitive actions to help promote engagement. Students can succeed sometimes without thinking deeply, and they do not think about the debugging process. Instead, they can either brute force or use a guess and check method without truly understanding how their code works.

The paper talks also about how group work is only successful when it’s necessary for collaboration. Splitting different cognitive efforts help support group collaboration as well.This includes setting goals, identifying research questions, looking for new information, and providing explanations.

Open learning environments are also discussed. This allows learners to select content and methods that they find approach in their stage of learning. For learning management systems, and teaching CS, this is an environment that should be implemented into the curriculum rather than a strict structure in how to learn programming.

Compiled Research:

What's the problem? Wordplay, as a programming language and sharing platform, does little to help teachers structure, plan, and teach computing. Here are a small --- and likely incomplete --- list of likely needs, that aren't yet met: Identifying ideas for lessons that teach particular computer science learning standards around the world Finding lessons localized in particular languages Finding lessons appropriate for particular levels of difficulty and prior knowledge Finding and adapting a lesson Having students work through a lesson and be able to link progress to a lesson, and share their progress with their teachers Tracking progress that multiple students have made together There are likely many other requirements that we have not gathered that teachers might have. This problem statement isn't done until we have thoroughly investigated their needs, and partnered with them to envision this feature.

What's the design idea? One possible idea is to create the notion of a lesson, from which teachers could assemble units. Lessons would teach particular computing, math, science, or language arts concepts, could be shared publicly, etc. They might follow a similar interaction model as the tutorial, but include embedded assessments.

Focus: Currently, I will specifically be focusing on reviewing research in relation to lesson plans, and what teachers need when creating lesson plans that align with school curriculums

Research:

IDEA PAPER 42 By L. Dee Fink at the University of Oklahoma

This paper addresses the model of integrated course design, in reference to college courses. However, most of this research can be applied to integrated course designs for other grade levels as well. It covers multiple steps to create lesson plans, the first one being identifying situational factors, including the specific context of the learning situation like how many students are in the class and how often they will meet, general context like the learning expectations, characteristics of the learners like life situations and prior knowledge, and characteristics of the teacher like level of knowledge. Situational factors impose limitations and guidelines on those seeking to design a significant learning experience. Once situational factors are determined, teachers can then move onto the next step of establishing learning goals. Answers to goal specific questions usually emphasize things such as critical thinking, knowing how to use course knowledge creatively, learning to solve real world problems, etc. Significant learning can be constituted by the 6 main components below:

Each kind of learning is interactive, such that each can stimulate any of the other kinds of learning. The intersection of these kinds of learning defines significant learning, which is the purpose of the integrated design process. Some questions that instructors can ask themselves when developing objectives are: a. What is the topic of the lesson? b. What should students learn? c. What should students understand and be able to do at the end of class? d. What should students take away from the particular lesson? After outlining the main learning objectives, it is important to determine the most important objectives to manage class time wisely. Consider the following questions: a. What are the most important concepts, ideas, or skills students should be able to grasp and apply? b. Why are they important? c. If I ran out of time, which ones could not be omitted? d. And conversely, which ones could I skip if pressed for time It is also important to develop a creative introduction to stimulate interest and encourage thinking. Students often have various levels of knowledge on certain topics, so it is important to ensure that introductions should be engaging for all students, and encourage thinking. Teachers can use a variety of approaches to engage students, such as a personal anecdote, historical event, thought-provoking dilemma, real world example, etc. The following questions could be asked to an instructor’s self when developing an introduction: a. How will I check whether students know anything about the topic or have any preconceived notions about it? b. What are some commonly held ideas or misconceptions about this topic that students might be familiar with? c. What will I do to introduce the topic? Given situational factors, instructors should prepare several different ways of explaining the material to catch the attention of more students and appeal to the different learning styles. Think about how much time each objective will take to teach. Build in extra time for extended explanation, questions, discussion, and strategies to check understanding. These questions will help design learning activities to use: a. What will I do to explain the topic? b. What will I do to illustrate the topic in a different way? c. How can I engage students in the topic? d. What are some relevant real life examples, analogies, or situations that can help students understand the topic? e. What will students need to do to help them understand the topic better? In terms of college courses, a content-centered course generally has two midterms and a final exam that assesses the student’s understanding. A learning centered course, which WordPlay should aspire to have on their platform and push for in classrooms, calls for a more sophisticated approach with educative assessments that enhance the quality of student learning. This can be simple checks for understanding at the end of each important topic, with flexibility on how students should report their answers. Below is a comparison between Audit-ive and Educative Assessments, that shows how educative assessments lead to better learning.

Teacher Needs and Core Questions What do teachers struggle with when using computer science programs? How is computer science taught? How has it been taught? Typically, in higher grade levels, CS classes are taught through the AP or IB curriculum - AP being Advanced Placement which is used in the US and Canada, and IB which is International Baccalaureate which is used internationally. Thus, everyone must learn the same core concepts which are tested on the final exam. This is how higher CS level classes are taught. For lower level CS classes, there are computer science standards for each state in the US. The computer science standards for Washington can be found online, as I cannot link them here. An international comparison can also be found online.

This will be important to reference when determining how to create lesson plans that align to almost everyone, either creating comprehensive ones or separate ones for each country. What do teachers need when coming up with curriculums for teaching computer science? a. They need to know the computer science standards for the state b. They need to know student backgrounds so they can adjust content for various learning levels c. An accurate CIP code: “Each CS learning standard consists of a core concept (what students need to do) and a core practice (how students need to do it). For middle and high school CS courses, examining the CS learning standards and aligning them to classroom instruction will guide districts through a process to choose an accurate Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code. Choosing the correct CIP code and state course code is critical to support accurate reporting and tracking of student enrollment” (OSPI).

How do we keep students engaged in learning? a. Provide incentives and unique activities for learning b. “Best practices for culturally responsive teaching include: • Modify curriculum to be relevant to the lived experiences of the student. • Use student strengths as a starting point and build on prior knowledge. • Invest in and take personal responsibility for students’ success. • Create and nurture cooperative and collaborative environments. • Encourage relationships among schools and communities. • Promote critical literacy and thinking. • Make explicit the power dynamics of mainstream society. • Share power in the classroom. • Engage students in social justice work”

Other Findings: A law was recently passed stating that all high schools must offer at least one computer science course.

Each lesson plan could follow the core steps discussed above. The following are steps that are adjusted to fit Wordplay lessons: a. Outline learning objectives for the lesson b. Develop a unique introduction that allows students to work through a coding problem to help them understand what they will learn c. Create lesson activities after teaching each important objective that allow students to practice on their own Include checks for understanding that allow students to try coding on their own, allow many attempts and hints, and provide explanations for correct solutions. d Summarize main points of the lesson towards the end of the video lesson.

Code Avengers - Inspiration for Wordplay Code Avengers is a platform that provides educational resources to students aged 5-11 (Foundational), 10-15 (Intermediate), 13-16 (Advanced). It also provides resources for those who are older and are working towards building a career that involves coding. It offers resources to educators to teach coding to their students, including a curriculum and professional development training. Educators a. Tailored Professional Development solutions to school districts all over the world. This allows educators to be more confident when teaching coding skills in the classroom. In New Zealand, they deliver PD to schools in the following capacities:
- Cultural capability
- Digital Fluency
- Local Curriculum
- Matauranga Maori
- Focuses on traditions, values, and philosophies from te ao Maori
- Aligned to computing curriulum of each school
- Provides student tracking and auto marking
- Interactive courses for students, PRO courses for ages 14+
- Student progress pages. b. Students/Juniors
- Various levels to ensure students can learn regardless of how much knowledge they begin with.
- Interactive coding lessons that revolve around a storyline and characters
- Allows students to stay engaged with what they’re learning, which is important when learning hard concepts
- Provides a parent dashboard that allows parents to track progress through courses, view projects they’ve created, and the concepts they’ve learned.
- Requires a subscription, but allows a free trial. c. Older Students/Pros
- Build an App
- Build Websites
- Become a Web Developer Small, short courses that allow for practice each day without taking up too much time. This website has some resources aligned with the list of needs that aren’t met yet for teachers, so WordPlays lessons should incorporate some of these features/topics.
Teaching marginalized groups coding - Supporting young refugees in Greece By the British Council

The British Council outlines the main details on how they are supporting young refugees entering the school system in Greece, in relation to coding. To teach students coding, they use the micro:bit, which is a pocket sized programmable computer that gives refugee youths confidence in digital literacy and prepares them for life outside these camps. 1.1 million refugees have passed through Greece since 2014. They say that children can be very creative with the micro:bit as its sensors make it easy for them for experimentation across many subject areas. For instance, they can code math games, but also use it to measure acceleration from their bicycles and skateboards. The Refugee Coding Project provides students with valuable career skills and encourages them to think about the social uses of technology. Many kids have dreams to create apps that would solve social problems they’ve experienced in their home country. This twenty week course meets for two hours every weekend in Salt Lake City, and approximately 40 refugees between the ages of 14 to 21 attend. Each week, students study the curriculum from Code.org, and participate in workshops on topics like robotics, art, or technology. Another program, Refugees on Rails, is a little more selective with the students it supports. Potential students are only accepted if they show commitment to code a process that requires a “change in thinking, lots of perseverance, and the ability to get comfortable with uncertainty, if not outright failure, along the way”. In order to teach coding to underserved communities, it is important to apply an entrepreneurial mindset that allows them to learn in respect to solving problems in their home countries. It is also important to motivate students to unlock their creative potential and stay true to their values.

Incorporating these steps into Wordplay Lessons: Current Design Idea: The design proposal is to create lesson simulations on Wordplay, similar to the Wordplay Tutorial, that teach students the basic concepts of computing. We will start small, teaching the notion of variables, for loops, functions, and methods. To develop these lesson plans, we will contact middle schools in the nearby area for curriculums of computer science classes, which will give a baseline to follow before creating lesson plans. The ultimate objective here is that middle school computer science classes will adopt Wordplay and use its lessons to teach the basics of computer science to students, as it is a more accessible platform that will ensure that everyone has the ability to learn the important skill of coding. We can then delve into creating more complex lessons that align with the high school introduction computer science class curriculums.

Please follow the community guidelines and do not post external links to documents: those links quickly die, and then we can't acces the research you did. Everything should be posted as text in GitHub, so it can always be read here.

I did not resolve this issue, but am looking forward to continuing to work on it. For progress so far, I have completed literary analysis on several papers related to addressing needs of teachers that teach programming. What needs to be done: Coming up with features or platforms to embody teacher needs, making a design proposal, testing with teachers, low and high fidelity mockups for defined products.

I did not resolve this issue, but I am thinking of continuing to work on it. In terms of progress so far, I have completed a couple literature reviews along with research on current grade level curriculums from US to the International Level, and research on applications similar to WordPlay that provide teaching services. In the future, I will come up with a refined design proposal that addresses all teacher needs to the best of its ability, taking into account the research I have done so far regarding accessibility, core content, etc.

Compiled research: Research Questions

What do teachers struggle with when using computer science programs?
How is computer science taught? How has it been taught?
What do teachers need when coming up with curriculums for teaching computer science?
How do we keep students engaged in learning?
Scratch teacher interface
Which teacher interface software supports are valuable to them?
What are teachers’ core needs for teaching CS?
What are teachers’ current lesson plans for CS?

Literature Review Source 1: Slagg, Alexander. EdTech. “Teaching the Principles of Computer Science Early in K–12 Schools”. June 23, 2022. Findings:

“Among U.S. high schools, only 51 percent offer computer science coursework, according to the 2021 State of Computer Science Education report by Code.org”
elementary schools more preoccupied with games and safety skills rather than logical thinking
CS now touches most career paths
There aren’t very many CS teachers, and technology can be intimidating for other teachers
Schools want to ensure that students have same access to technology at home
‘not enough minority or female role models in computer science’
exposure to CS in the classroom needs repetition and more time commitment, which is scarce and hard to find, otherwise students won’t retain knowledge

Source 2: Akcaoglu, M., Dogan, S. & Hodges, C.B. Real Coding and Real Games: Design and Development of a Middle School Curriculum Using Unity 3D. TechTrends 66, 931–937 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00782-1 Findings:

“computational literacy is already becoming a requirement for many jobs”
“few teachers have the capacity to teach CS, and there is a disproportionate attendance from underrepresented groups”
slow progress with disadvantaged groups
current professional development opportunities are “not sustainable, insufficient in duration, do not focus clearly on teacher-specific CS knowledge, or offer sustained support”
MUST BE “high-quality, structured, and engaging”
there needs to be “research-informed practices that are tailored to meet local and national needs”
game-design based curriculum will increase kids’ motivation and learning
increase in equity, helps decrease gender gap in learning
attracts students from different backgrounds
doesn’t always give teachers lead roles, but they should have lead teacher and design roles

Source 3: Mehmet Celepkolu, Erin O'Halloran, and Kristy Elizabeth Boyer. 2020. Upper Elementary and Middle Grade Teachers' Perceptions, Concerns, and Goals for Integrating CS into Classrooms. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 965–970. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366937 Findings:

Study explores teachers’ current beliefs and understanding of CS, their challenges
with incorporating CS, and how they can be
supported in recognizing the educational potential of CS
Themes from the Focus Group Interviews
Teachers’ limited exposure to CS -> misconceptions and some negative feelings
they have a lack of understanding of CS
teachers believe CS can help students learn problem solving and critical thinking
CS workshop helped teachers build confidence and understanding

Source 4: Rachmatullah, A., & Wiebe, E. N. (2023). Exploring middle school students' interests in computationally intensive science careers: The CISCI Instrument validation and intervention. Science Education, 107, 333–367. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21771 Findings:

Computational technology often used by cs tools and concepts, more common in student career pathways
“Research has suggested that computationally rich activities have been found to improve students' understanding of scientific concepts”
“this age range has been identified as a critical juncture, when students start to crystalize their interests and identify which careers they want to pursue in the future”
Ages 11-14 are formative for pursuing careers
Career self-efficacy: individual’s belief in their ability to be successful in a career or goal
Career value: how students measure a career as being meaningful

Career choices interest model

Competitive Analysis Competitor 1: Code.org Sources: Common Sense Media. Website Reviews Code.org. Accessed 5 May 2024.

Findings:
Pros:
Good way of systematically teaching students
Teachers’ reviews:
“I use this website to introduce students to coding! The students love it and it has friendly characters they love working with. It starts easy and gets harder to challenge students.”, Amy S.
Good free resource to get students interested in coding
“Would love to see an expansion in the amount of content resources-at least links to these resources”, Georgia G.
“simulated activities are integrated and provide students with the hands-on reinforcement”, Georgia G.
Cons (from student reviews):
“Code.org isn't even fun or entertaining, it just makes you drive crazy. I think that code.org shouldn't even exist”
“It does not really help you coding because it's just some blocks that does not even make sense”

Game structure for learning Competitor 2: Scratch Source: Common Sense Media. Website Reviews Scratch. Accessed 15 April 2024.

Pros: Can be integrated into other subjects easily, draws students into coding, interactive and independently enables students to make their own programs
Cons: Anyone can create accounts, moderation of content is done by user reporting
Teachers’ comments
Dan K.: “Scratch is an awesome...free way to learn language and programming interactively. You can create your own games, animations and so much more! Only downfall is some bullies can access the site :(“
Meghan B.: “My overall opinion of this program as a teaching tool is positive. I love that the children have the opportunity to create their own program, watch what happens, make changes and play around with it.”
Kristine M.: “If you let the kids really play with it they will learn faster than if you try to teach each aspect of coding”
Megan B.: “Scratch has been my go-to programming language for students in Grades 2-12 for the past decade...I have found it to be a great tool for integrating technology into any and all subject areas”
Lesley K.: “I love that Scratch has visual guides and tutorials to get ANYONE started, even if they have no previous experience...It helps a teacher differentiate because it's easy enough for beginners, but there's enough options for more complexity (i.e. Making whole games) to keep more experienced students engaged for awhile”
Overall findings
Lessons should provide content and experiences for children of different experience levels, different learning capacities (faster vs. slower) in order for teachers to be able to integrate it into their classrooms

Competitor 3: Khan Academy

Sources: Kelly, Daniel. (2016). What Do We Know about Khan Academy? A Review of the Literature and Justification for Further Study. 10.13140/RG.2.1.2462.5044. Findings:

Video tutorials for students to learn
Practice questions for students to practice knowledge
Incentive: students can level up through earning mastery points
positive effects on attitudes towards learning
What works
being low-cost
Positive reinforcement and engagement through
mastery-based achievement
“Educational research on mastery learning tells us that learners who work on a skill until a high assessment score is achieved will have better long-term retention of the material.”
Pain points/What could be improved
only focuses on basic skills
attempt, attack, abandon cycle in student behavior (hard to keep them engaged in new ways)

Competitor 4: Duolingo

Sources: Lau, Tyler. A review of Duolingo: is it really worth your time? Cambridge Coaching. Findings:

Work through lessons in form of tree
Pain points
have to constantly keep up with skills and review them (discouraging)
What works
visual appeal is strong, with incentives
allows for productivity

I did not resolve this issue but contributed by conducting literature review and competitive analysis. Next, what needs to be done is affinity analysis on the research found and interviews with students and teachers.

Thank you for sharing your work on this @mrawat201! Will you and @rylouie be continuing work on this? Please unassign yourselves if not, so we know it's available for others to work on.

Hi @amyjko in my previous comment I specified that I would like to continue work on this issue.

Thanks @rylouie. Our teachers and student RAs will likely be working on this this summer, so we'll want to coordinate on this. I'll comment here, so you know our plans.

Sounds good @amyjko!

wordplaydev / wordplay

Lessons #427

What's the problem?

What's the design idea?

Design specification