5610 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Mike Ryan
  2. https://ceismc.gatech.edu/about/staffdirectory/mike-ryan
  3. Senior Researcher
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Georgia Institute of Technology
  1. Meltem Alemdar
  2. https://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/about/staffdirectory/meltem-alemdar
  3. Senior Research Scientist/co-PI
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Georgia Institute of Technology
  1. Douglas Edwards
  2. Research Associate II
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Georgia Institute of Technology
  1. Michael Helms
  2. Research Scientist
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Georgia Institute of Technology
  1. Diley Hernandez
  2. https://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/about/staffdirectory/dr-diley-hernandez
  3. Senior Research Scientist/ CAPACiTY Program Director
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Georgia Institute of Technology
  1. Sunni Newton
  2. Research Associate II
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Georgia Institute of Technology
  1. Marion Usselman
  2. https://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/about/staffdirectory/marion-usselman
  3. CAPACiTY Principal Investigator
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Georgia Institute of Technology

Culturally Authentic Practice to Advance Computational Thinking in Youth (CAP...

NSF Awards: 1639946

2019 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades 9-12

The NSF-funded STEM+C project, CAPACiTY, promotes the development of computational thinking CT skills by engaging students in authentic and culturally relevant problem-driven learning. Students create multimedia digital narratives consisting of websites, mobile apps, and computationally generated music in a collaborative manner. In the process, students will become proficient with a variety of computational tools. The curriculum centrally features iterative activity 1) that engages students in learning crosscutting concepts of Patterns and Structure/Function (from the NGSS) and their analogous CS ideas; and 2) that promotes personally, socially and culturally authentic student engagement. The project encourages students to employ their voice and choice throughout the curriculum, to work collaboratively as they make decisions related to their project, and to design and develop digital artifacts. This promotes an incremental learning mindset in students, where students reflect on their skills and personal accomplishments. Here, we highlight our work in these two dimensions of the our high school computer science curriculum.

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Discussion from the 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase (23 posts)
  • Icon for: Joseph Kern

    Joseph Kern

    Researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 12:30 a.m.

    I liked seeing several parallels between your project and ours (Agricultural Applications of Computer Science), trying to help students find authentic tasks that make CS useful to them in their cultural context.  And one of our updates in our next round of development is to better align our tasks with NGSS components, so this serves as a great model.  I was wondering about what mechanism within your project is used to transition students from the curricular skill-building challenges that everyone does, to an opportunity to complete independent projects?  We want to achieve a level of success where students realize the utility of CS and use their new skills in personal, non-school projects.  So we are looking for ways to help our pilot teachers help students feel empowered to do this.

  • Icon for: Mike Ryan

    Mike Ryan

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 10:11 a.m.

    Hi, Joseph. While there are a variety of CS and non-CS based activities sprinkled through the curriculum that leverage inquiry that everyone completes, students spend a vast majority of the course working on a problem and challenge that they identify and pursue at the beginning of the school year. We engage in a 4-6-week long process to identify and research issues or challenges to which they personally or communally connect. They identify components to these problems, other existing solution attempts, and then they eventually begin to form their own solution options. After 6 weeks, the problems/challenges are presented to the class. The class then selects 5-6 of the topics to pursue throughout the year, with students self-selecting the problem team they wish to join. Then, teams of 3-6 people throughout the year collaboratively build multiple digital artifacts for the community outside of their classroom to inform, educate and advocate on their problem or challenge... learning CS concepts and skills along the way obviously. We have had to help develop teacher understanding in and management of Project-Based Learning. In particular, we have built in scaffolds for teachers to run this problem/challenge selection process and the management of group work.

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Jared O'Leary
  • Icon for: Mike Ryan

    Mike Ryan

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 10:25 a.m.

    Welcome to everyone who is visiting our showcase video. Our project, Culturally Authentic Practices to Advance Computational Thinking in Youth (CAPACiTY) seeks to improve and broaden student participation in computer science through more engaging, personally meaningful, project-based course design. There's obviously some context in the abstract here, but you can also learn more about our research project at the CAPACiTY website.

    Look forward to any questions or comments you might have!

  • Icon for: Abby Funabiki

    Abby Funabiki

    Facilitator
    Associate Executive Director
    May 13, 2019 | 11:53 a.m.

    How engaging to have students work on problems and challenges that they themselves identify and are personally meaningful! I'm also a big fan of the project-based focus. Would you be willing to share your process for designing culturally relevant resources and encouraging culturally authentic practices? Is this something teachers learn to facilitate? Or is it integrated into the lessons or course? Thank you in advance for more info! 

       

  • Icon for: Diley Hernandez

    Diley Hernandez

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist/ CAPACiTY Program Director
    May 13, 2019 | 12:34 p.m.

    Hi Abby, the cultural authentic practices are completely embedded within the curriculum and tied to the PBL arch in different ways. However, because they are all facilitated by the teachers, they require an understanding of what they intend to accomplish, what they require from the teacher as facilitator, and why. For example, this is the case of practices such as how to group students attending to diversity considerations, how to legitimize and value students' voices and choices in the process of problem selection, how to support students when exploring positives identities and paths in CS with a success-oriented outlook, etc. We do a combination of face-to-face training with the teachers before starting the program and before they begin each unit, and weekly teleconferencing meetings. The curriculum also has embedded notes and documents that alert the teachers when a "culturally authentic practice (CAP)" is taking place and what are things they should consider for that section or activity. Those will become available with the curriculum once it is finalized.

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Abby Funabiki
  • Icon for: Jon Boxerman

    Jon Boxerman

    Researcher
    May 17, 2019 | 06:29 p.m.

    What a fascinating project! Can you share some of the design problems the students chose to work on that they found to be personally, socially or culturally relevant?  

  • Icon for: Diley Hernandez

    Diley Hernandez

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist/ CAPACiTY Program Director
    May 20, 2019 | 04:44 p.m.

    Hi Jon. Problems have included poverty, bike safety, obesity, sleep deprivation, police brutality, water quality, to name a few. They are quite varied. Thank you for your question!

  • Icon for: R. Bruce Mattingly

    R. Bruce Mattingly

    Higher Ed Administrator
    May 14, 2019 | 01:59 a.m.

    I'm glad to see a project that is focused on increasing participation from under-represented groups in STEM. Thanks for sharing the link to your website. I'm eager to learn more about your work, and about culturally authentic practice in general. 

  • Icon for: Mike Ryan

    Mike Ryan

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Researcher
    May 14, 2019 | 10:07 a.m.

    Thanks for your note, Bruce. We are in our final year of implementation and data collection, so we will spend the next academic year analyzing and summarizing results for publication. Additionally, we are looking to post a final draft of our curriculum at our website, so please visit the website in the next few months for updates.

  • Icon for: Jim Hammerman

    Jim Hammerman

    Researcher
    May 14, 2019 | 05:06 p.m.

    Great video. Can you talk a bit about your research? I saw that you're looking at impacts on computational thinking, perceptions of CS, and understanding of cross-cutting concepts. What's your approach and how will you look for differential impacts on different groups of students? Also, I'm curious about the complex systems dynamic modelling you mention – can you say a little more about that?

  • Icon for: Michael Helms

    Michael Helms

    Co-Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 15, 2019 | 10:41 a.m.

    Hi Jim, I can reply to the complex system dynamics portion of your question. We are studying the system at the classroom level as a set of interacting agents: students, teacher, classroom, school, administration & intervention team (us). Each of these agents is comprised of attributes, for example we look at a teacher's CS content knowledge, CS self-efficacy, CS pedagogical knowledge, teaching experience, etc. The complex system model connects each agent-attribute to those agent-attributes in the system that are most directly influenced by it as determined by literature, observation, surveys and interviews. While we attempt to use objective criteria, the determination of the most influential attributes and formulation of these connections - collectively "the model" - is still a bit of an art. We can represented this graphically as a causal loop diagram, which we have found in past projects is valuable to the research team in and of itself. It provides a shared vocabulary and common ground for discussing observations, research results and confounds. Network analysis can be performed to determine which attributes exert the greatest influence. This may be informative both for allocation of discretionary resources and the identification of key success (or failure) criteria when looking to implement the intervention elsewhere.

  • Icon for: Quinn Burke

    Quinn Burke

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 14, 2019 | 06:48 p.m.

    Thanks for posting this video -- I admire the project's focus on culturally relevant resources and encouraging culturally authentic practices, but wonder about how students identify relevant problems from their own communities that can be addressed through introductory coding?  Clearly, as stated in the thread here, the teacher helps facilitates this process but is there a library of past projects--or pertinent issues for students to reflect on?

  • Icon for: Mike Ryan

    Mike Ryan

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Researcher
    May 15, 2019 | 10:23 a.m.

    Hi, Quinn... thanks for your question. We have heard others inquire about and want to discuss a sense of incongruity between PBL and coding. Our research center and staff have been investigating and developing PBL curricula for 25 years, so we have come to understand that PBL provides us the pedagogical framework to make learning relevant for students, no matter the learning goals. We use PBL, and its associated strategies for problem identification and pursuit, to help students find engaging issues and challenges they care about. The iterative design and development of digital artifacts in our curriculum, that requires the content and skills the course targets, is in service to communicating and creating empathy for their problem or challenge.

    As an example, student teams build a website to educate and inform the public about the issue they are investigating (e.g., water quality issues in their community, teen homelessness, public transit in their community, access to support services for mental health). Later they write code in a music production software (EarSketch) to craft original music to score a personalizing testimonial video that appears on their website. In another unit, students design a game to build empathy and advocacy for their issue by creating an AppInventer game for people to download and play on a tablet or mobile device. They use CS skills and knowledge to create these artifacts to engage the public and build understanding, empathy and action for the issue or challenge.

  • Icon for: Quinn Burke

    Quinn Burke

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 15, 2019 | 12:21 p.m.

    thanks Mike for getting back to me -- this helps me understand-- and cool way to integrate EarSketch here!

     

  • Icon for: Lisa Miller

    Lisa Miller

    Facilitator
    Teacher
    May 14, 2019 | 10:30 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing your video!  I look forward to seeing the curriculum on your website when it is updated.  Where do you see your curriculum fitting into a high school CS curriculum pathway that may include current common CS classes such as Exploring CS, AP CS Principles and AP CS A (Java)?  I am also wondering if you have looked at the impact on students' interest in continuing to take CS classes in high school, or in college, after completing the CAPACITY curriculum. Thanks in advance for any additional information.

  • Icon for: Douglas Edwards

    Douglas Edwards

    Co-Presenter
    Research Associate II
    May 15, 2019 | 09:27 a.m.

    Hi Lisa. Our CAPACiTY curriculum is aligned to the introductory high school CS course for the state of Georgia titled Introduction to Digital Technology (IDT). The next course in the pathway is a non-AP Georgia CS Principles course or AP CS Principles. Then students have a third course choice in the CS pathway including AP CS A, Game Design, Embedded Computing, Web Development, or Programming Games and Apps. However, this third course choice tends to be limited by what is offered in their school, unless the student chooses to take one of these courses online in the Georgia Virtual School on their own time.

    We are going to look at students intention to persist in CS at the end of the course. One of the reasons we look at intention to persist rather than follow on courses is that often students want to continue in a pathway, but are unable to based on school scheduling logistics. Thanks for your questions.

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Lisa Miller
  • Icon for: Lisa Miller

    Lisa Miller

    Facilitator
    Teacher
    May 15, 2019 | 09:58 p.m.

    Thank you Douglas!

  • Icon for: Kathryn Cunningham

    Kathryn Cunningham

    Graduate Student
    May 15, 2019 | 03:58 p.m.

    I'm excited about the use of "structure" and "function" in your curriculum. It seems that thinking about code using this framework has suggested new activities for students. Is there anywhere I can go to learn more about your use of the structure and function concepts, and how that influenced your work?

  • Icon for: Mike Ryan

    Mike Ryan

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Researcher
    May 16, 2019 | 04:02 p.m.

    Hi, Kathryn... our attempt to integrate the cross-cutting concepts (XCCs) was really born from our background in science ed research. We have had NSF awards periodically over the last two decades to investigate a number of K-12 science learning questions and concepts, usually around project-based learning, inquiry, and design. When the XCCs emerged from the new NGSS, we (like others) spent a good bit of time thinking about teaching and learning of XCCs in science courses. But it occurred to our team that if XCCs are cross-cutting, then what are we learning about those concepts in other STEM domains? How might students learn with and about XCCs to understand (in this case) computer science? So, as we crafted our curriculum, we leaned heavily on the definitions and conceptions of the XCCs articulated in the NGSS. Then, we looked for places in the learning sequence where they could not only be highlighted, but also leveraged to better understand the topic or skill.

    It turns out that both Patterns and Structure/Function often work in tandem. In science, patterns of occurrence, position, or behavior often signal causal mechanism or structure/function relationship (e.g., repeatedly observing down drafts and thunder might signal to an observer an approaching thunderstorm; AND they each suggest possible mechanisms, structures and functions at work within a storm cloud). So we use patterns to signal that structure function might be at work in coding. In a game or other digitally coded experience, students can look for repeated or predictable actions, objects, consequences (patterns) to signal that some structure/function in the code is operating.

    This year was our first year implementing the Pattern-Structure-Function activities explicitly in the curriculum. We look to analyze, summarize and publish on the effort in the coming year.

  • Icon for: Kate Meredith

    Kate Meredith

    Informal Educator
    May 17, 2019 | 07:50 a.m.

     Love this!  It is increasingly important for getting teachers in public schools to participate in curriculum development projects, to have that curriculum project approved. Not easy. It appears you have done that. Can you describe that journey?    

  • Icon for: Mike Ryan

    Mike Ryan

    Lead Presenter
    Senior Researcher
    May 20, 2019 | 11:06 a.m.

    Thanks, Kate. Some of my project colleagues can speak more directly to this, as they have shepherded our partnerships with school districts and the IRB requirements. But, in general, we have been working with Atlanta area and Georgia schools for more than two decades, in a variety of capacities. Our relationships with those districts has been mutually beneficial, and we are able to turn those past experiences into future partnerships. We have years of working with districts not only on projects, but on professional learning workshops and opportunities on our campus. Of course, we follow protocols established by the districts to seek partnerships on these types of grants, and we follow all IRB guidelines specified by GT and by the districts. Our track record and, more importantly, our rational/justification of the research helps our partners feel comfortable working in their classrooms and with their teachers/students.

  • Icon for: Jon Boxerman

    Jon Boxerman

    Researcher
    May 17, 2019 | 06:43 p.m.

    In addition to the crosscutting concepts being a bridge among NGSS dimensions by cutting across disciplines and practices, they can also help frame learning by serving as a lens through which to understand, for instance, viewing a science system as comprised of interacting parts. Do you see patterns as a lens through which the students come to master culturally authentic practices? If so, how do you see the patterns crosscutting concept helping learners approach the STEM learning process? 

  • Icon for: Diley Hernandez

    Diley Hernandez

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Scientist/ CAPACiTY Program Director
    May 20, 2019 | 04:21 p.m.

    Hi Jon. Thank you for your question. We did not used patterns as an explicit way to have students think about their problems (which were not always science related). However, when students built their resumes and incorporated the skills they were learning in class, we used the html resume activity as a framework for students to think about the code behind the formatting structures and the relationship to their communicative functions. I would say that is one way in which some of the curriculum authentic activities came together with the cross cutting concepts. I think patterns can be used effectively to help students identify characteristics that are part of systems or even social practices. In a way ethnomathematics does this. What is different about our project is that because students were allowed high levels of both voice and choice, the problems and issues they brought into the classroom varied greatly. I would have to think a bit more about the potential to make these explicit connections. I hope I answered your question. Thank you for the food for thought!

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