research-article

Five years of game programming outreach: understanding student differences

Authors:

Antti-Jussi Lakanen,

Ville Isomöttönen,

Vesa LappalainenAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 647 - 652

https://doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2538914

Published: 05 March 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents lessons learned from five years of teaching a five-day game design and programming outreach course. The course was offered in summer time and targeted at middle and high school students. In total, 462 youngsters have taken part in 21 course instances. We describe our course concept, and discuss our successes and challenges. In particular, we focus on understanding our student populations by presenting descriptives and statistics of the events, and performing a statistical cluster analysis based on pre- and post-surveys. The cluster analysis was complemented with an analysis of the qualitative data, also originating from the surveys. Taken together, students could be classified into five groups with substantial differences: Enthusiasts, Newbies, Uncertains, Experimenters, and Unsatisfieds. Awareness of the clusters helps instructors of similar courses in developing course content, designing differentiated instruction, and planning follow-up or advanced courses.

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Cited By

Vrieler T(2024)Applying the Computer Science Capital Framework to Understand Factors Facilitating Children's Decision to Participate in Code ClubsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699544(1-13)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699544
Vrieler T(2024)A Case Study of a Code Club's Inclusion Policy and How It Is Implemented Online and in the Classroom2024 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON60312.2024.10578834(1-10)Online publication date: 8-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON60312.2024.10578834
Nolan KFaherty RQuille KBecker BBergin SGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)Developing an Inclusive K-12 Outreach ModelProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387421(145-151)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387421
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Index Terms

Five years of game programming outreach: understanding student differences
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2014

800 pages

ISBN:9781450326056

DOI:10.1145/2538862

Conference Chairs:
J. D. Dougherty
J.D. Dougherty, Haverford College
,
Kris Nagel
Georgia Gwinnett College
,
Program Chairs:
Adrienne Decker
Rochester Institute of Technology
,
Kurt Eiselt
University of British Columbia

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Published: 05 March 2014

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SIGCSE '14: The 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 5 - 8, 2014

Georgia, Atlanta, USA

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SIGCSE '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 108 of 274 submissions, 39%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

Vrieler T(2024)Applying the Computer Science Capital Framework to Understand Factors Facilitating Children's Decision to Participate in Code ClubsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699544(1-13)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699544
Vrieler T(2024)A Case Study of a Code Club's Inclusion Policy and How It Is Implemented Online and in the Classroom2024 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON60312.2024.10578834(1-10)Online publication date: 8-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON60312.2024.10578834
Nolan KFaherty RQuille KBecker BBergin SGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)Developing an Inclusive K-12 Outreach ModelProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387421(145-151)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387421
Vrieler TNylén ACajander Å(2020)Computer science club for girls and boys – a survey study on gender differencesComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2020.183241231:4(431-461)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2020.1832412
Hazzan ORagonis NLapidot THazzan ORagonis NLapidot T(2020)Teaching Methods in Computer Science EducationGuide to Teaching Computer Science10.1007/978-3-030-39360-1_10(181-220)Online publication date: 6-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39360-1_10
Lakanen AKärkkäinen T(2019)Identifying Pathways to Computer ScienceACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/328307019:3(1-30)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3283070
Denner JCampe SWerner L(2019)Does Computer Game Design and Programming Benefit Children? A Meta-Synthesis of ResearchACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/327756519:3(1-35)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3277565
Tuhkala AWagner MIversen OKärkkäinen T(2019)Technology Comprehension — Combining computing, design, and societal reflection as a national subjectInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2019.03.00420:C(54-63)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
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Decker AMcGill MCaspersen MEdwards SBarnes TGarcia D(2017)Pre-College Computing Outreach ResearchProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3017680.3017744(153-158)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3017680.3017744
Lukkarinen ASorva JSheard JMontero C(2016)Classifying the tools of contextualized programming education and forms of media computationProceedings of the 16th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/2999541.2999551(51-60)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2016
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