EXP: Exploring Social Programming Environments in Early Computing Courses

华盛顿州立大学将设计和研究社交编程环境(SPE)的教育负担，这是一个以学习者解决问题的活动和进步的社交网络式活动流为中心的技术丰富的学习环境。通过华盛顿州立大学、太平洋大学和梅萨社区学院的学生和教师参与的迭代参与式设计过程，该项目将开发(A)SPE，以支持学习者在课外从事作为早期计算课程核心的各种个人编程作业；以及(B)一套实用指南和最佳做法，以帮助教师在其课程中实施社会编程作业。这项工作将为学习和参与如何在社会问题解决环境中进行提供新的、有理论基础的描述，以及与它们对学生学习结果、问题解决过程、态度和保留的影响相关的经验发现。项目工作人员在先前工作的基础上，将基于工作室的学习模式适应于计算教育，旨在通过促进有效的在线学习社区来解决计算学位课程的低留存率问题。该项目将产生两种新的开源技术--社交插件？计算机编程环境，以及为社会编程量身定做的学习管理系统，这可以很容易地用于K-12和本科计算机教育。虽然该项目侧重于计算机教育，但新的社会问题解决技术和研究的实证结果将适用于许多STEM学科，在这些学科中，学习者通过在社会环境中单独处理问题而受益。

Washington State University will design and study the educational affordances of a social programming environment (SPE), a technology-rich learning environment centered around a social networking-style activity stream of learners' problem-solving activities and progress. Through an iterative, participatory design process involving students and instructors at Washington State University, Pacific University, and Mesa Community College, this project will develop (a) an SPE to support learners as they work outside-of-class on the kinds of individual programming assignments that are the centerpiece of early computing courses; and (b) sets of practical guidelines and best practices to help instructors implement social programming assignments in their courses. This work will contribute new, theoretically-grounded accounts of how learning and participation proceed in social problem-solving environments, as well as empirical findings related to their impact on student learning outcomes, problem-solving processes, attitudes, and retention.Building upon previous work adapting the studio-based learning model for computing education, the project staff aim to address low retention in computing degree programs by facilitating effective online learning communities for introductory computing courses. This project will result in two new open source technologies?a ?social plug-in? for a computer programming environment, and a learning management system tailored for ?social programming??that can be readily used in both K-12 and undergraduate computing education. While this project focuses on computing education, the novel social problem-solving technologies and the empirical findings of the research studies will be applicable to many STEM disciplines in which learners benefit by working individually on problems within a social environment.