Research in primary and secondary computing education is a young field with strong ties to national educational systems. Nevertheless, its theories, methods, and results are internationally applicable and of interest to researchers and practitioners in the field. WiPSCE aims at improving the exchange of research and practice relevant to teaching and learning in primary and secondary computing education, teacher training, and related research.
Proceeding Downloads
Computational Thinking 2.0
Machine learning (ML) has triggered major changes across a great number of computing fields. People’s lives today are full of ML-driven services: eerily accurate recommendations, ability to automatically tag one’s friends in photos, and well working ...
Digital Education and Informatics – You can’t have One without the Other
The discussion about informatics as a school subject and media education is almost 40 years old. In Germany for example, it was decided in the 1980s to teach ”basic information technology” in an integrated way, i.e. hidden in other subjects. This has ...
An Integration of Computational Thinking and Language Arts: The Contribution of Digital Storytelling to Students’ Learning
Embedding Computational Thinking (CT) in the context of various school subjects across the curriculum, not only CS or STEM, is receiving increased attention. CT skills can be instrumental in many subjects, which makes the integration an opportunity for ...
Common Patterns in Block-Based Robot Programs
Programmable robots are engaging and fun to play with, interact with the real world, and are therefore well suited to introduce young learners to programming. Introductory robot programming languages often extend existing block-based languages such as ...
Common Problems and Effects of Feedback on Fun When Programming Ozobots in Primary School
Computational thinking is increasingly introduced at primary school level, usually with some form of programming activity. In particular, educational robots provide an opportunity for engaging students with programming through hands-on experiences. ...
Gender-dependent Contribution, Code and Creativity in a Virtual Programming Course
Since computer science is still mainly male dominated, academia, industry and education jointly seek ways to motivate and inspire girls, for example by introducing them to programming at an early age. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has forced many such ...
Imagine Yourself as a Media and Computer Science Teacher
In order to investigate pre-service primary teachers’ mental images and beliefs about Media and Computer Science teaching, the Draw-A-Science-Teacher-Test Checklist (DASTT-C) was adapted for the field of Media and Computer Science. For this explorative ...
Video Analysis of a Teacher’s Use of Notional Machines in an Introductory High School Electronic Textile Unit: A three-tier framework to capture notional machines in practice
Learners’ conceptions of program dynamics shape their reading, writing, and debugging of code. But, the invisibility of underlying program behaviors that transform code to outcomes challenges learners. Teachers adopt notional machines, defined as ...
BYTE Challenge - from competition to STEM platform
The BYTE Challenge is a project of the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (German Informatics Society) which was held for the first time from March to June 2021 as a Computer Science competition for students from all over Germany. More than 800 students ...
Grasping the Concept of Decentralized Systems for Instant Messaging
Whether a centralized, distributed, or decentralized system approach is selected for Internet-based services affects sovereignty and responsibilities of users and providers alike. Therefore, computer science education can contribute to informed decision-...
Quantifying the Corona Effect: How much the pandemic-induced switch from face-to-face to online teaching increased students' self-efficacy – a practical report.
This practical report explores the impact of forced learning design changes due to the Corona pandemic. At the School of Education Northwestern Switzerland over 2000 K-6 pre-service elementary school teachers got educated in computer science and computer ...
Teaching Mathematical Modeling with Computing Technology: Presentation of a Course based on Evacuations
Mathematical modeling is considered a crucial skills, both in modern life and STEM education. Prior research has identified the relevance of working on complex and authentic modelings problems in education. However, up to this point, little of the ...
Comparing Teachers’ and Preservice Teachers’ Opinions on Teaching Methods in Computer Science Education
Teaching methods are a variety of pedagogical approaches that can be used by teachers to enable student learning in the classroom. While the efficiency of these methods largely depends on the characteristics of the individual learners and the classroom ...
Modelling the Competency to Evaluate the Impacts of Computing
Enabling students to evaluate the impacts of computing, both positive and negative, on their own lives and on society is an internationally proclaimed goal of a K-12 computing education. While recent years have seen the development of competency models ...
Observing Computational Thinking Skills of Kindergarten Children
- Larissa Meyer-Baron,
- Ramona Stieger,
- Bettina Waldvogel,
- Nicole Schumann,
- Cornelia Ruedisueli,
- Franziska Mayr
Computational Thinking skills along with reading, writing, and calculating skills are basic skills for children’s future. Computational Thinking has much in common with problem-solving and creative thinking in general. With regard to Karl Popper "all ...
Beliefs and Expectations of Primary Student Teachers in Informatics
With the new ”Curriculum 21” in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, media education and informatics have become much more important for compulsory education. However, introducing a new subject is a challenging task. Most university students had no ...
A Model for Infusing Computational Thinking Skills at Teacher Colleges in a Developing Country
- Jocelyn Simmonds,
- Francisco J. Gutierrez,
- Nancy Hitschfeld,
- Catalina Torrent,
- Cecilia Casanova,
- Sebastián Toro-Guajardo,
- Valentín Muñoz
Current advances emphasize that young learners benefit from developing and applying computational thinking (CT) skills to solve problems in a variety of subjects, not limited to mathematics and science. Under this scenario, the inclusion of CT in ...
”Roteco” - a Swiss teacher community for educational robotics
Computer Science has been introduced as a new subject in the compulsory school curriculum in Switzerland. Research on educational robotics has highlighted potentials of using robots as a hands-on tool to foster computational thinking skills. However, to ...
Addressing challenges of constructionist modeling of adaptive systems
How should computer-based educational tools represent Machine Learning (ML) systems for didactic purposes? We address this question using constructionist learning theory and the intelligent agent paradigm of AI. ML in this context is understood as ...
An Experience in Explicitly Training Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers in Programming Concepts with ScratchJr
ScratchJr is a block-based language intended for young children aged 5 to 7 years old. The language and its app were developed using a learner-centered approach to make it usable and understandable to children. Obviously, Early Childhood teachers using ...
Brief Summary of Existing Research on Students’ Conceptions of AI
Already now, pupils come into contact with many phenomena of computer science (CS), especially artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which appear in different forms and in a variety of applications, in their everyday lives. In this work we present ...
Designing a Research Approach to Investigate Computer Science Student Teachers’ Beliefs on AI in School
The rising topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly popular in secondary schools. Due to the recent integration of AI into various school curricula, the topic is gaining more and more importance in Computer Science (CS) Education ...
Developing deeper self-directed learning in database design: Factors that influence knowledge transfer
This paper reports on developing deeper self-directed learning (DSDL) in a database design course, and on the factors that hindered and promoted knowledge transfer. Cognitive load theory and social constructivist theory were incorporated to enhance DSDL. ...
Enhancing the Role of Computational Thinking in Primary and Secondary Education in Switzerland
Computational Thinking (CT) is a fundamental and important skill set in our world and should therefore be taught and practiced in school. In this poster abstract, we present our ongoing initiative on establishing CT as a fundamental and interdisciplinary ...
How to Reveal Students’ Conceptions of Programming and Designing Digital Games
Digital games are an important leisure activity for teenagers. In Germany, 72% of 12- to 19-year-olds play every day or several times a week in the year 2021. This poster abstract presents a research design to survey students’ conceptions of programming ...
Internet in the mind of children: Mental maps of beginner and advanced 5th and 9th graders
The revamping of computing curricula has brought topics that had rarely been taught previously to primary school children, such as principles of functioning of the Internet. Before new lessons can be prepared for children, mapping their preconceptions ...
Investigating Teachers’ Diagnostic and Intervention Skills in Debugging
Students often struggle with debugging in the K-12 classroom. Supporting them individually provides a huge challenge for teachers, as they have to grasp the problem, diagnose why the student is stuck, and react with an appropriate intervention without ...
Preconceptions and attitudes of pre-service primary school teachers: towards teaching the principles of the Internet
Computing education has been newly introduced at primary schools (ISCED 1) in the Czech Republic, similarly to other countries. One of the new topics refers to the Internet and how it works. Not much is known yet about how prepared pre-service primary ...
Use of storytelling to increase engagement and motivation in computing in lower primary schools
Research suggests that gender-based stereotypes in computing may develop at an early age. However, there is limited evidence on how teaching interventions can be used to increase engagement and interest, especially in computing education for young ...
Index Terms
- Proceedings of the 17th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education
Recommendations
Acceptance Rates
Year | Submitted | Accepted | Rate |
---|---|---|---|
WiPSCE '22 | 41 | 14 | 34% |
WiPSCE '19 | 43 | 23 | 53% |
WiPSCE '18 | 72 | 32 | 44% |
WiPSCE '17 | 37 | 16 | 43% |
WiPSCE '16 | 58 | 10 | 17% |
WiPSCE '12 | 28 | 9 | 32% |
Overall | 279 | 104 | 37% |