CAREER: Physical Representations of Programming Concepts

伊利诺伊大学致力于改善计算机科学(CS)的教与学，并有助于我们理解跨学科表示法的使用。物理(3D)和书面(2D)表征是建立学生概念理解的基本工具，并得到CS教育以外的大量研究的支持。CS教育研究中对代表性的忽视限制了有效和公平的CS教育的机会。这个项目解决了高中生和大学生是否以及如何从编程概念的物理表示与书面表示中学习。在整个项目中，研究人员将与洛杉矶和芝加哥的教师合作，并为他们提供直接支持。这个项目将通过培养高中和大学教师更好地支持学生对CS的概念理解来支持其他努力，以扩大对计算的参与。增加对编程概念的物理表示的理解和使用可以改变CS的教学及其可学性。本项目包括六个混合方法研究，在这些研究中，学生被随机分配到具有物理表示、书面表示或仅有代码的教学序列中。教学顺序和物理表现将通过课堂实践得到完善，出版物将提供实践的例子并记录高中教师的见解。这些研究将为使用物理表征作为建立概念知识的工具提供理论和经验证据，同时借鉴和促进其他学科的相关工作。为了指导CS中新的表示法的开发，本项目将创建设计和使用表示法来教授编程概念的原则。该项目建立在先前资助的NSF项目CSTeachingTips.org的基础上，将为教授特定CS主题开发一种方法分类，以启发和指导以后的研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The University of Illinois seeks to improve the teaching and learning of computer science (CS) and contribute to our understanding of representation use across disciplines. Physical (3D) and written (2D) representations are essential tools for building students’ conceptual understanding and are supported by a rich body of research outside of CS education. The inattention to representations in CS education research limits opportunities for effective and equitable CS education. This project addresses whether and how high school and college students learn from physical versus written representations of programming concepts. Throughout the project, the researchers will collaborate with and provide direct support to teachers in Los Angeles and Chicago. This project will support other efforts to broaden participation in computing by preparing high school and college teachers to better support students’ conceptual understanding of CS. Increasing understanding and use of physical representations of programming concepts can transform the teaching of CS and its learnability.This project includes six mixed-methods studies in which students are randomly assigned to an instructional sequence with physical representations, written representations, or only code. The instructional sequence and physical representations will be refined through classroom practice, and publications will provide examples of practice and document high school teachers’ insights. These studies will contribute theoretical and empirical evidence for the use of physical representations as a tool to build conceptual knowledge in CS while both drawing on and contributing to related work in other disciplines. To guide the development of new representations in CS, this project will create principles for designing and using representations to teach programming concepts. Building upon a previously funded NSF project, CSTeachingTips.org, this project will develop a taxonomy of methods for teaching specific CS topics to inspire and guide later research.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.