The aim of the master's work is to offer elementary school teachers and students a model for teaching computer science based on STEM education and digital storytelling about Kekec. STEM education emphasizes experiential learning in real-world settings and helps develop a variety of skills, including creativity and 21st century skills. Digital storytelling includes the use of multimedia elements, such as image and sound, which bring richness to the storytelling.
As part of the master's thesis, we organized a summer school for students in the second trimester of primary school, where we conducted a workshop called "Kekec's adventures". We introduced the students to the basics of programming by using blocks. We found that the majority of students, who signed up for the workshop, already had some prior knowledge of programming with Scratch.
Over the five day course, we collaborated with the students to create games and stories about Kekec. During this process, the students simultaneously learned the fundamentals of programming and computational thinking. We also incorporated the concept of physical computing into certain activities, where the students used micro:bit microcontrollers to create gadgets for the modern-day Kekec.
With this teaching model, our aim is to provide primary school teachers and students with an interdisciplinary approach to teaching computer science, which combines elements of STEM education and digital storytelling. Such an approach encourages creativity, the development of 21st-century skills, and enables students to actively engage in the learning process and enhance their computational thinking abilities.
In the theoretical part, we presented the learning theories and approaches, on which the workshop is based. We presented Papert's constructionist learning theory, which is based on learning through making and creating stories and games. This learning is more effective because students find it interesting and exciting. Throughout the workshop, we also developed concepts of computational thinking. We also used several learning approaches, from learning through game design and physical computing with micro:bit microcontrollers, to STEM projects, each of which we defined individually. We also used selected activities from The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) curriculum, with the help of which we designed programming learning and determined the goals of the project learning work during the workshop. We were interested in whether the students deepen their knowledge of the electronic components used when making the gadget and if they learn to use conditional sentences by using the sensors on the micro:bit. We wanted to know, if the mean scores on the pretest and posttest, which test understanding of computational thinking concepts, differ. We were also interested in which concepts of computational thinking are expressed by the final projects. Is there a relationship between the factors: the complexity of the student's code, the complexity of the pair's tool, the division of work in the pair, the cooperation and communication of the pair, the number of questions, etc. We were also trying to find out, whether the evaluations of the projects according to the criteria differ statistically significantly depending on the age of the students.
In the empirical part, we described the course of the workshop and the instruments with which we checked the research questions. Conceptual knowledge of programming was checked with a pre-test and post-test, and practice was observed during the workshop. We analyzed the code of the students' projects qualitatively according to the criteria and with existing tools such as CodeMaster. Based on the statistical analysis of the code, it automatically evaluates the project made in Snap!. The analysis showed that the students learned something about electronic components by using the micro:bit and building various mini-projects with it. The understanding of the concept of a conditional statement and some introductory programming concepts was also improved. According to the final projects, algorithmic thinking and decomposition ability improved the most. In the code of the final projects of pairs of students, they used variables, loops and events. The least frequently used concept, however, was operators. Pairs where both students were from the 6th grade, i.e. older, because they probably also had more prior knowledge, achieved slightly better project evaluations.
Based on the analysis of the results, we can conclude that learning through digital storytelling, creating games in Snap! and with the help of micro:bit microcontrollers is suitable especially for students of the 2nd educational period, especially if the students have some prior knowledge of programming with particles . The context of learning with the stories of the national hero, Kekec, motivated the students and they liked them. You can also use the Snap! and ways of working through the BJC curriculum, students learn even more complex computational thinking concepts such as functions, lists, etc. The Master's thesis will help teachers as additional material when teaching introductory programming, especially after the first encounter with programming with particles and before continuing programming, e.g. in Python or Java programming language. The material is also prepared for students, so they can work on projects independently or in groups according to the instructions.
|
