This Research to Practice Full Paper depicts and evaluates a secondary school project on using pa... more This Research to Practice Full Paper depicts and evaluates a secondary school project on using pair- and solo-programming of mini-games in introductory programming classes. In addition to investigating various factors influencing students' problem-solving skills (K9; age 14-15), we introduce the software metric Lines Of Code (LOC) to compare outcomes on that specific measure in the pair- and solo-programming setting. The mini-games were developed with the free personal edition of the game development engine Unity™ and C#. In the current study, four different classes at the secondary level were instructed and researched. All classes had approximately the same number of students, the same tasks, the same tutorials, but were using a different social setting for programming. In response to the worldwide pandemic in the years 2020 and 2021, instruction and research proceeded either in virtual or in hybrid-learning mode. We chose participatory action research to accommodate for the complexity of factors inherent in the field as well as for its iterative, cyclic nature. The current cycle is the third of a series on studies that have investigated various aspects of introductory pair-programming. The evaluation phase employs a digital questionnaire with open and closed questions aimed to capture student's perceptions regarding problem solving. In addition, the software metric Lines Of Code” (LOC), traditionally used to measure the size of a computer program by counting the number of lines of the program's source code, was adapted to measure students' achievement in pair- and solo-programming. With our research we aim to contribute to make learning to program more effective, engaging, and inclusive, and we would like to promote 21st century competences besides programming skills. In addition, we are eager to share our practice of pair-programming with educators in order to inspire them to experiment with pair-programming as a social setting with high potential, even in times of required social distancing.
Elektronicky podporovane vzdělavani zaměřene na studenta Person-centered eLearning, ve smyslu Per... more Elektronicky podporovane vzdělavani zaměřene na studenta Person-centered eLearning, ve smyslu Person-centered Technology-enhanced Learning PCeL, je aplikaci původně psychologickeho přistupu orientovaneho na clověka Person-centered Approach, vyvinuteho C. Rogersem, do oblasti výuky podporovane technologiemi. Kapitola se zaměřuje na specificke rysy hodnoceni takove výuky, kde studujici vstupuje do výukoveho procesu nejen v roli přijemce, ale i spolutvůrce, a to vcetně spolecneho definovani autentických výukových cilů. Z pohledu hodnoceni jsou pak procesy výuky, ci přesněji uceni se, vcetně růstu osobnosti, srovnatelně hodnotne jako jeji cistě kognitivni výsledky. Do popředi vystupuji metody sebehodnoceni (self assessment), hodnoceni cleny týmu (peer evaluation) a kvalitni zpětna vazba uciteli, který řidi kurz. Hodnoceni studentů PCeL a ucitele PCeL jsou proto dvě strany teže mince a použivaji se pro ně podobne nastroje. Kapitola prezentuje předevsim zkusenosti ze dvou pracovisť – z Masarykovy univerzity v Brně a z Videňske univerzity), kde byla řada konceptů a technik hodnoceni vyvinuta, ověřena a výsledky publikovany.
Can digital competencies be acquired by solving real problems? The educational intervention MadeB... more Can digital competencies be acquired by solving real problems? The educational intervention MadeByKids called an external educational provider to 17 schools to conduct a series of workshops, having pupils age 7 – 12 solve challenges such as designing the schoolbag 4.0 or the future classroom. The workshops were designed by adopting the Stanford Design Thinking Method for Kids (http://www.ideaco.org) and digital technologies with the goal to “teach” children computational thinking, collaborating in teams, resolving conflicts, presenting, giving/receiving feedback, etc. In this paper, we take a participatory action research (PAR) approach with the goal of exposing significant chunks of the incredibly rich experience. A content analysis of a qualitative survey among teachers and findings from a focus group reflect the teachers’ view. The study indicates that the acquisition of digital competences needs to be backed by personal and social capacities that take time to mature. Furthermore, we learned that the children’s teachers must be included consistently to ensure their cooperation and improve sustainability. Besides providing inspiration for teachers, implications for teacher education are derived and the national project is related to the findings from studies conducted abroad in order to contribute to constructive educational innovations crossing national boundaries.
In this contribution, the focus is on applying humanistic educational principles in a technology ... more In this contribution, the focus is on applying humanistic educational principles in a technology enhanced environment. We share ideas on creating a facilitative, resourceful atmosphere and on designing learning processes that allow participants to co-construct knowledge while expanding meta-cognitive competencies such as the ability to work in teams, self-organization, congruence between feelings, thoughts, and expression, understanding, communicative capacities, etc. The article refers to research results, but also concentrates on sharing technology enhanced learning scenarios with our readers. Our experience confirms that education can be motivating, insightful and enriching for students as well as educators, if it springs from such goals. In this context, we examine the ways in which thoughtfully integrated technology serves as an ally in accelerating learning processes.
2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Oct 13, 2021
The under-representation of women in IT has multiple possible causes, ranging from sociocultural ... more The under-representation of women in IT has multiple possible causes, ranging from sociocultural aspects to individual dispositions and social attribution. This full research to practice paper explores secondary school students' (age 12–15) stereotypical perspectives of computer scientists and possible ways to challenge them. The major goal is to let young students form a more accurate concept of a computer science professionals by alleviating distorted images, often transmitted through media and the environment. Students who might not think of themselves as fitting in the prevalent stereotype of a computer scientist and may even lose interest in the field. Consequently, our approach challenges stereotypes in order to make any effort to raise young students' interest in computer science and in pursuing careers in this field. As part of this endeavor, we analyzed the drawings and descriptions of IT professionals made by 87 students aged 12–15 to determine what sets of preconceived perspectives and misconceptions are present in the learners' minds regarding persons in the IT profession. Our results have shown that that stereotypical views on IT actually exist in students' mindsets, but are subject to change when systematically challenged in a friendly and safe atmosphere. Aside of the scientific contribution, the paper aims to inspire and support educators in their efforts to help women and underrepresented groups in computing outgrow inaccurate stereotypes and to uncover young students' potential interest in the field. With this we aim to contribute to overcoming the gender imbalance and foster more equality in the occupational field of information technologies. Strategically, by creating a more sensitive, diverse and harmonious future that computer scientists knowingly and unknowingly co-shape.
Soft skills, societal awareness and the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams are crucial tr... more Soft skills, societal awareness and the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams are crucial traits for future software engineers. Still, these social skills seem to be underrepresented in the education of software engineers. To support a practical integration of such aspects also into education, a so-called “Diversity Framework” has been developed that helps to externalize implicit factors such as different work behaviors in project teams. This paper firstly presents this theoretic, empirically validated framework for externalizing and managing diverse work styles in information and communication technology (ICT) environments. Moreover, the paper examines how two student teams on an undergraduate level perceived the Diversity Framework in a qualitative focus group research setting. Furthermore, the results exemplify how the different teams approached the topic differently. Finally, this work provides suggestion for future research and an integration of the framework in academic software engineering education and life-long learning.
Learning how to code by creating video games promises high motivation, engagement and fun for the... more Learning how to code by creating video games promises high motivation, engagement and fun for the students. In this study, the Unity Game Development Environment, a widely spread tool for professional game developers, was employed for teaching secondary school students to develop their own video games. The research design for the game development activities followed a Design-Based Research approach. The learning design was based on situated learning accompanied by a mix of tutorials, teacher explanations and support & collaboration amongst the students. The results of the first iteration of Design-Based Research confirmed the hypotheses that video game development was fascinating and engaging for the majority of young learners. Using a professional tool with an embedded physics engine provided additional attraction for teenagers. From the first cycle of game development we learned that dealing with the complexity of the development environment in a systematic way, time management, advanced teachers’ competencies in handling the environment, and providing well balanced learning materials are crucial to successfully employ a professional tool like Unity in secondary education. Besides improved materials and a stepwise process of adding complexity e.g. by starting with developing mini-games, the most important change for the second cycle is to significantly extend the time allocated for game development. This seems justified due to the vast spectrum of skills and competences students tend to acquire when collaborating on complex and exciting issues like developing games.
Despite their proven importance, team- and leadership competences tend to be highly underrepresen... more Despite their proven importance, team- and leadership competences tend to be highly underrepresented in Computer Science curricula. In order to support improving team performance in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) project teams, the rhea.framework of team leadership interaction has been developed by one of the authors. In this Research-to-Practice Full paper, the framework is briefly introduced and the students’ experience with the rhea.framework in a student-centered Computer Science course at Master level is studied. We focus on the process of introducing the rhea.framework as an open educational resource and on students’ experience of applying the framework for reflecting upon their team leadership interactions. Moreover, students were asked to evaluate the rhea.framework in light of their initial experience with it. While students suggested improvements on the rhea.framework, they appreciated the class on team leadership interaction. Consequently, the framework and scenario described in this paper is intended to encourage educators to include experiential learning into their courses and to research the effects. This can be done, for example, by reusing the rhea.framework and joining the authors in their endeavor to provide sustainable, significant learning on handling challenging interpersonal issues in ICT projects.
While active listening as a basic attitude and practice has been broadly applied and researched i... more While active listening as a basic attitude and practice has been broadly applied and researched in face-to-face settings, its practice in video-conference mediated format is far less investigated. To fill this gap, this paper investigates online active listening and open sharing in an academic course on Communication and Teamwork. The research objective is to find out, how active listening can be acquired in online settings and which features are perceived as most valuable from the perspective of the participants and the facilitator. This paper takes a participatory research approach including a thematic analysis of students' reflections on active listening, their ePortfolios, and their self-evaluations. In a nutshell, the vast majority of students reported significant advances in active listening and open sharing, attributing them to features such as the constructive atmosphere in the meetings, the high relevance of the themes and online resources, and the active participation in break-out rooms, exercises, and group discourse. Nevertheless, participants tended to miss the rich real social contact with their peers! Implications for further research and practice on soft-skills training are derived.
This Research to Practice Full Paper depicts and evaluates a secondary school project on using pa... more This Research to Practice Full Paper depicts and evaluates a secondary school project on using pair- and solo-programming of mini-games in introductory programming classes. In addition to investigating various factors influencing students' problem-solving skills (K9; age 14-15), we introduce the software metric Lines Of Code (LOC) to compare outcomes on that specific measure in the pair- and solo-programming setting. The mini-games were developed with the free personal edition of the game development engine Unity™ and C#. In the current study, four different classes at the secondary level were instructed and researched. All classes had approximately the same number of students, the same tasks, the same tutorials, but were using a different social setting for programming. In response to the worldwide pandemic in the years 2020 and 2021, instruction and research proceeded either in virtual or in hybrid-learning mode. We chose participatory action research to accommodate for the complexity of factors inherent in the field as well as for its iterative, cyclic nature. The current cycle is the third of a series on studies that have investigated various aspects of introductory pair-programming. The evaluation phase employs a digital questionnaire with open and closed questions aimed to capture student's perceptions regarding problem solving. In addition, the software metric Lines Of Code” (LOC), traditionally used to measure the size of a computer program by counting the number of lines of the program's source code, was adapted to measure students' achievement in pair- and solo-programming. With our research we aim to contribute to make learning to program more effective, engaging, and inclusive, and we would like to promote 21st century competences besides programming skills. In addition, we are eager to share our practice of pair-programming with educators in order to inspire them to experiment with pair-programming as a social setting with high potential, even in times of required social distancing.
Elektronicky podporovane vzdělavani zaměřene na studenta Person-centered eLearning, ve smyslu Per... more Elektronicky podporovane vzdělavani zaměřene na studenta Person-centered eLearning, ve smyslu Person-centered Technology-enhanced Learning PCeL, je aplikaci původně psychologickeho přistupu orientovaneho na clověka Person-centered Approach, vyvinuteho C. Rogersem, do oblasti výuky podporovane technologiemi. Kapitola se zaměřuje na specificke rysy hodnoceni takove výuky, kde studujici vstupuje do výukoveho procesu nejen v roli přijemce, ale i spolutvůrce, a to vcetně spolecneho definovani autentických výukových cilů. Z pohledu hodnoceni jsou pak procesy výuky, ci přesněji uceni se, vcetně růstu osobnosti, srovnatelně hodnotne jako jeji cistě kognitivni výsledky. Do popředi vystupuji metody sebehodnoceni (self assessment), hodnoceni cleny týmu (peer evaluation) a kvalitni zpětna vazba uciteli, který řidi kurz. Hodnoceni studentů PCeL a ucitele PCeL jsou proto dvě strany teže mince a použivaji se pro ně podobne nastroje. Kapitola prezentuje předevsim zkusenosti ze dvou pracovisť – z Masarykovy univerzity v Brně a z Videňske univerzity), kde byla řada konceptů a technik hodnoceni vyvinuta, ověřena a výsledky publikovany.
Can digital competencies be acquired by solving real problems? The educational intervention MadeB... more Can digital competencies be acquired by solving real problems? The educational intervention MadeByKids called an external educational provider to 17 schools to conduct a series of workshops, having pupils age 7 – 12 solve challenges such as designing the schoolbag 4.0 or the future classroom. The workshops were designed by adopting the Stanford Design Thinking Method for Kids (http://www.ideaco.org) and digital technologies with the goal to “teach” children computational thinking, collaborating in teams, resolving conflicts, presenting, giving/receiving feedback, etc. In this paper, we take a participatory action research (PAR) approach with the goal of exposing significant chunks of the incredibly rich experience. A content analysis of a qualitative survey among teachers and findings from a focus group reflect the teachers’ view. The study indicates that the acquisition of digital competences needs to be backed by personal and social capacities that take time to mature. Furthermore, we learned that the children’s teachers must be included consistently to ensure their cooperation and improve sustainability. Besides providing inspiration for teachers, implications for teacher education are derived and the national project is related to the findings from studies conducted abroad in order to contribute to constructive educational innovations crossing national boundaries.
In this contribution, the focus is on applying humanistic educational principles in a technology ... more In this contribution, the focus is on applying humanistic educational principles in a technology enhanced environment. We share ideas on creating a facilitative, resourceful atmosphere and on designing learning processes that allow participants to co-construct knowledge while expanding meta-cognitive competencies such as the ability to work in teams, self-organization, congruence between feelings, thoughts, and expression, understanding, communicative capacities, etc. The article refers to research results, but also concentrates on sharing technology enhanced learning scenarios with our readers. Our experience confirms that education can be motivating, insightful and enriching for students as well as educators, if it springs from such goals. In this context, we examine the ways in which thoughtfully integrated technology serves as an ally in accelerating learning processes.
2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Oct 13, 2021
The under-representation of women in IT has multiple possible causes, ranging from sociocultural ... more The under-representation of women in IT has multiple possible causes, ranging from sociocultural aspects to individual dispositions and social attribution. This full research to practice paper explores secondary school students' (age 12–15) stereotypical perspectives of computer scientists and possible ways to challenge them. The major goal is to let young students form a more accurate concept of a computer science professionals by alleviating distorted images, often transmitted through media and the environment. Students who might not think of themselves as fitting in the prevalent stereotype of a computer scientist and may even lose interest in the field. Consequently, our approach challenges stereotypes in order to make any effort to raise young students' interest in computer science and in pursuing careers in this field. As part of this endeavor, we analyzed the drawings and descriptions of IT professionals made by 87 students aged 12–15 to determine what sets of preconceived perspectives and misconceptions are present in the learners' minds regarding persons in the IT profession. Our results have shown that that stereotypical views on IT actually exist in students' mindsets, but are subject to change when systematically challenged in a friendly and safe atmosphere. Aside of the scientific contribution, the paper aims to inspire and support educators in their efforts to help women and underrepresented groups in computing outgrow inaccurate stereotypes and to uncover young students' potential interest in the field. With this we aim to contribute to overcoming the gender imbalance and foster more equality in the occupational field of information technologies. Strategically, by creating a more sensitive, diverse and harmonious future that computer scientists knowingly and unknowingly co-shape.
Soft skills, societal awareness and the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams are crucial tr... more Soft skills, societal awareness and the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams are crucial traits for future software engineers. Still, these social skills seem to be underrepresented in the education of software engineers. To support a practical integration of such aspects also into education, a so-called “Diversity Framework” has been developed that helps to externalize implicit factors such as different work behaviors in project teams. This paper firstly presents this theoretic, empirically validated framework for externalizing and managing diverse work styles in information and communication technology (ICT) environments. Moreover, the paper examines how two student teams on an undergraduate level perceived the Diversity Framework in a qualitative focus group research setting. Furthermore, the results exemplify how the different teams approached the topic differently. Finally, this work provides suggestion for future research and an integration of the framework in academic software engineering education and life-long learning.
Learning how to code by creating video games promises high motivation, engagement and fun for the... more Learning how to code by creating video games promises high motivation, engagement and fun for the students. In this study, the Unity Game Development Environment, a widely spread tool for professional game developers, was employed for teaching secondary school students to develop their own video games. The research design for the game development activities followed a Design-Based Research approach. The learning design was based on situated learning accompanied by a mix of tutorials, teacher explanations and support & collaboration amongst the students. The results of the first iteration of Design-Based Research confirmed the hypotheses that video game development was fascinating and engaging for the majority of young learners. Using a professional tool with an embedded physics engine provided additional attraction for teenagers. From the first cycle of game development we learned that dealing with the complexity of the development environment in a systematic way, time management, advanced teachers’ competencies in handling the environment, and providing well balanced learning materials are crucial to successfully employ a professional tool like Unity in secondary education. Besides improved materials and a stepwise process of adding complexity e.g. by starting with developing mini-games, the most important change for the second cycle is to significantly extend the time allocated for game development. This seems justified due to the vast spectrum of skills and competences students tend to acquire when collaborating on complex and exciting issues like developing games.
Despite their proven importance, team- and leadership competences tend to be highly underrepresen... more Despite their proven importance, team- and leadership competences tend to be highly underrepresented in Computer Science curricula. In order to support improving team performance in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) project teams, the rhea.framework of team leadership interaction has been developed by one of the authors. In this Research-to-Practice Full paper, the framework is briefly introduced and the students’ experience with the rhea.framework in a student-centered Computer Science course at Master level is studied. We focus on the process of introducing the rhea.framework as an open educational resource and on students’ experience of applying the framework for reflecting upon their team leadership interactions. Moreover, students were asked to evaluate the rhea.framework in light of their initial experience with it. While students suggested improvements on the rhea.framework, they appreciated the class on team leadership interaction. Consequently, the framework and scenario described in this paper is intended to encourage educators to include experiential learning into their courses and to research the effects. This can be done, for example, by reusing the rhea.framework and joining the authors in their endeavor to provide sustainable, significant learning on handling challenging interpersonal issues in ICT projects.
While active listening as a basic attitude and practice has been broadly applied and researched i... more While active listening as a basic attitude and practice has been broadly applied and researched in face-to-face settings, its practice in video-conference mediated format is far less investigated. To fill this gap, this paper investigates online active listening and open sharing in an academic course on Communication and Teamwork. The research objective is to find out, how active listening can be acquired in online settings and which features are perceived as most valuable from the perspective of the participants and the facilitator. This paper takes a participatory research approach including a thematic analysis of students' reflections on active listening, their ePortfolios, and their self-evaluations. In a nutshell, the vast majority of students reported significant advances in active listening and open sharing, attributing them to features such as the constructive atmosphere in the meetings, the high relevance of the themes and online resources, and the active participation in break-out rooms, exercises, and group discourse. Nevertheless, participants tended to miss the rich real social contact with their peers! Implications for further research and practice on soft-skills training are derived.
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Papers by Renate Motschnig