Paper Info
Title
Teaching Programming in Secondary Education Through Embodied Computing Platforms: Robotics and Wearables.
Abstract
Pedagogy has emphasized that physical representations and tangible interactive objects benefit learning especially for young students. There are many tangible hardware platforms for introducing computer programming to children, but there is limited comparative evaluation of them in the context of a formal classroom. In this work, we explore the benefits of learning to code for tangible computers, such as robots and wearable computers, in comparison to programming for the desktop computer. For this purpose, 36 students participated in a within-groups study that involved three types of target computer platform tangibility: (1) desktop, (2) wearable, and (3) robotic. We employed similar blocks-based visual programming environments, and we measured emotional engagement, attitudes, and computer programming performance. We found that students were more engaged by and had a higher intention of learning programming with the robotic rather than the desktop computer. Furthermore, tangible computing platforms, either robot or wearable, did not affect the students’ performance in learning basic computational concepts (e.g., sequence, repeat, and decision). Our findings suggest that computer programming should be introduced through multiple target platforms (e.g., robots, smartphones, wearables) to engage children.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1145/3025013
TOCE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Ubiquitous computing,embodiment,robot,wearable,learning,experiment,children
Secondary education,Wearable computer,Computer science,Embodied cognition,Visual programming language,Human–computer interaction,Artificial intelligence,Ubiquitous computing,Robot,Multimedia,Robotics,Computer programming
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
17
2
1946-6226
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.38
26
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alexandros Merkouris181.65
Konstantinos Chorianopoulos252660.40
Achilles Kameas335550.94