EXP: Exploring Social Programming Environments in Early Computing Courses

华盛顿州立大学将设计和研究社会编程环境（SPE）的教育启示，这是一个技术丰富的学习环境，围绕着学习者解决问题的活动和进展的社会网络式活动流。通过涉及华盛顿州立大学、太平洋大学和梅萨社区学院的学生和教师的反复参与式设计过程，该项目将开发（a）一个SPE，以支持学习者在课外完成作为早期计算课程核心的各种个人编程作业;以及（B）一套实用的指导方针和最佳做法，以帮助教师在其课程中执行社会方案设计任务。这项工作将有助于新的，理论基础的帐户如何学习和参与进行社会问题解决的环境，以及相关的实证研究结果对学生的学习成果，解决问题的过程中，态度和保留的影响。在以前的工作适应基于工作室的学习模式计算教育的基础上，项目工作人员的目标是通过促进有效的在线学习社区，为入门计算机课程，以解决低保留率的计算机学位课程。该项目将产生两种新的开源技术？是吗？社交插件的计算机编程环境，和学习管理系统量身定制的？社会规划？它可以很容易地用于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，学习者可以通过在社会环境中单独解决问题而受益。

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.