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Encouraging the Development of Computational Thinking Skills through Structured Dance Activities (Discussion Paper)

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Fiona FairlieAuthors Info & Claims

Koli Calling '23: Proceedings of the 23rd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

Article No.: 40, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/3631802.3631811

Published: 06 February 2024 Publication History

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Abstract

This paper investigates whether aspects of structured dance and choreography may improve cognitive skills related to computational thinking. It also explores the relationship between performance on computational thinking tasks and motivation. Twenty participants,aged between 7 and 9 years old, undertook the Beginners Computational Thinking Test (BCTt) as a pre-test, took part in three dance related workshops then completed the BCTt as post-test and responded to an adapted version of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI). Student performance on the BCTt improved significantly from pre-test to post-test for both boys and girls and seems generalised across the computational categories measured by BCTt. The study did not show a correlation between performance and motivation in girls but suggests that there may be some correlation between improvement in score and reported enjoyment in boys.

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Cited By

Castro Fcai sZhong VDesPortes K(2024)Body and Code: A Distributed Cognition Exploration Into Dance and Computing LearningProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656206(196-210)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635636.3656206

Index Terms

Encouraging the Development of Computational Thinking Skills through Structured Dance Activities (Discussion Paper)
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computational thinking

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Koli Calling '23: Proceedings of the 23rd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 2023

361 pages

ISBN:9798400716539

DOI:10.1145/3631802

Copyright © 2023 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 06 February 2024

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Koli Calling '23

Koli Calling '23: 23rd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 13 - 18, 2023

Koli, Finland

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Cited By

Castro Fcai sZhong VDesPortes K(2024)Body and Code: A Distributed Cognition Exploration Into Dance and Computing LearningProceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity & Cognition10.1145/3635636.3656206(196-210)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3635636.3656206

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