Promoting Commenting and Debugging in Early Years Programming

该项目将推进“面向学生和教师的创新技术体验”（ITEST）项目的工作，以更好地理解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学（STEM）领域追求职业的动机和能力的实践。STEM专业人员必须有效和高效地沟通和证明流程，并发现和修复错误。在这个项目中，研究人员将调查学生在游戏中的解释，以及如何使用一步一步的解决问题的示范，称为工作示例，可以使小学早期的学生，特别是女学生，熟悉和能力，评论和调试计算机编程代码。在基础教育中建立这些实践可以帮助创造一个对代码进行注释和解释一个人的思维过程是自然和预期的劳动力。该项目将把学生的编程经验与行业专业人士的编程经验联系起来，以提高他们对未来STEM职业的兴趣。在一系列的干预课程中，一年级和三年级的学生将合作学习如何使用OSMO（TM）的Coding Awbie游戏编程。特别是，研究人员将在两年的时间内调查以下研究问题：(1)一年级和三年级学生在自由游戏期间如何以及何时评论和调试他们的代码，与要求他们在游戏前解释他们将做什么（即解释游戏）相比？(2)学生在游戏前或游戏后分析工作实例，他们的评论和调试是如何比较和变化的？(3)除计算机编码外，学生对习题的注释和调试与他们对数学问题的解释和纠错有何关系？(4)干预如何影响学生早期对编程的态度和对编程在STEM专业中的作用的认识？措施包括编程和数学解释和调试任务，以及与编程相关的调查。通过这种重复测量设计，研究人员将了解什么条件最能支持学生在程序中学习编码时进行解释和调试，学生将在初等教育的早期获得重要的STEM实践。此外，行业专业人士的演讲将有助于将实践与各种STEM职业联系起来，帮助学生了解解释和调试实践的相关性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivation and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). It is essential that STEM professionals effectively and efficiently communicate and justify processes, and find and fix mistakes. In this project, researchers will investigate how students' explanations during play, and the use of step-by-step demonstrations of problem-solving, called worked examples, can enable early elementary school students, female students in particular, to gain familiarity and competency with commenting and debugging computer programming code. Establishing these practices in elementary education could help create a workforce where commenting on code and explaining one's process of thinking is natural and expected. The project will connect students' programming experiences with those of industry professionals in an effort to increase their interest in future STEM careers. Over a series of interventional sessions, pairs of first- and third-graders will work in partners to learn how to program using the Coding Awbie game by OSMO(TM). In particular, researchers will investigate the following research questions over two years: (1) How and when do first- and third-graders comment on and debug their code during free-play compared to when they are asked to explain what they will do before playing, i.e., explained play? (2) How does students' commenting and debugging compare and change depending on if they analyze worked examples before or after their play? (3) How does students' commenting and debugging of worked examples relate to their explaining and correcting errors in mathematics problems in addition to computer coding? (4) How does the intervention affect students' early attitudes toward programming and knowledge of the role of programming in STEM professions? Measures include programming and mathematics explanation and debugging tasks as well as surveys related to programming. Through this repeated measures design, researchers will learn what conditions best support students' explaining and debugging while learning to code within the program, and students will gain important STEM practices in their early years of elementary education. Further, presentations by industry professionals will help connect the practices to a variety of STEM careers, helping students see the relevance of the practices of explaining and debugging.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.