Computing in the Classroom

CIC: Course Information

mcorey — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 15:11:17 +0000

CIC: Course Information mcorey Tue, 01/08/2023 - 16:11

Overview

Computing in the Classroom (CiC) is a 20 credit course at Level 10, normally taken in Year 4. It runs throughout the year. There is no exam for this course, the course mark is based 100% on coursework. The University descriptor is here.

The purpose of this course is for students to learn about the theory and practice of computer science education, and to make a positive contribution to learners and teachers in schools.

During the course, students will design learning materials for a portfolio based on discussions with education professionals, analysis of the appropriate school curricula, and assessment of pupils' interests.

Course topics include:

Computer science in schools curricula in Scotland and other countries
Good practice in computer science pedagogy from research evidence
Effective teaching techniques
Giving and receiving feedback
Inclusion
Lesson planning

Your portfolio will contain contributions you have made towards children’s learning about Computer Science alongside a reflective commentary about the learning design choices you made. As you work through the weekly tasks, you should take a note of blog entries or creative work which could be useful in your portfolio. At the end of semester 1, you will select which portfolio items you want to submit for Report 1. You’ll get feedback on these which will help you to work towards additional portfolio items for Report 2 and the Presentation at the end of semester 2.

Course guide

Learning outcomes

On completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Critique key aspects of emerging research on computer science pedagogy, and analyse how these pedagogies may be applied to deliver topics either within Curriculum for Excellence or the relevant SQA qualifications.
Engage with the local community by helping to upskill primary and secondary school teachers about up to date topics in Informatics.
Design and develop effective teaching material, methodologies, and practical projects for computing modules taught in schools based on a synthesis of research knowledge with techniques and approaches learned through observation of teaching practice in the school setting and discussions with teachers.
Skilfully communicate to a range of audiences and convey clearly technical concepts to different age groups.

Link for online classes

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZDI4MDk3ZTAtYmY1Mi00N2Y0LWI4YTYtOTJiOTQ0Mzc1M2Zk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%222e9f06b0-1669-4589-8789-10a06934dc61%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%229ec886f1-dbda-42b5-a766-d8cf2d3c2f44%22%7d

Drop-in help sessions

In addition to the weekly seminar which is on Thursday at 11am, you can come along to a drop-in session if you want to talk through an idea or get some feedback. Drop-ins will start on Sept 25th.

Monday - online drop in session with Judy 3pm - 4pm.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZTBjMTcyN2YtMTkyYi00NTAwLWI3YWQtMjIwYjYwY2I1ZDJl%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%222e9f06b0-1669-4589-8789-10a06934dc61%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%229ec886f1-dbda-42b5-a766-d8cf2d3c2f44%22%7d

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CIC: Assessment

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:06 +0000

CIC: Assessment flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

Assignment information

Assignment marking scheme

Presentation information

Examples of Report 1 from previous students

Example of evaluation from a previous student (she chose to write it formally in a report but you can enter the information in the form)

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CIC: Semester 2, Week 10: Feedback from experts

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:04 +0000

CIC: Semester 2, Week 10: Feedback from experts flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

Weeks 10 and 11 give you an opportunity to get an expert evaluation of your materials. Remember that you need to evaluate your contributions for the semester 2 hand-in; feedback from expert educators’ is one way to do this. I have invited colleagues to come and help with evaluation during the classes. If you have other evaluation plans, then you do not need to do these tasks but please come to help your classmates with their evaluations on Thursday!

If you want your materials to be evaluated during the class session on 28th March and 4th April, email Judy.Robertson@ed.ac.uk as soon as possible so I can get an idea of numbers.
Plan which aspect of your materials you will ask the students and experts to evaluate. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t finished yet because feedback on a prototype is actually very helpful. (It’s like user centred design or rapid prototype development). In fact, I’d recommend getting feedback on whatever you have on these dates just in case you don’t manage to find anyone to evaluate it when you do happen to have finished it (at 2am the day before the deadline :-)).The participants likely won’t have enough time to work through a long course completely, but you could select a representative sample of it for them to review. You will have around 20 minutes to show your materials during the class and get feedback.
Design a set of questions which you will ask the participants, and a way to collate their responses. For example, you could ask people verbally and take notes on their answers, or use MS Forms to get their written feedback.
Come to the class in week 10 or 11 and prepare to demonstrate your materials to a small group. We’ll have multiple rounds of breakout rooms so everyone who wants to evaluate can have an opportunity. Please come along to support the other students! This is time for some good Karma…

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CIC: Resource List

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:04 +0000

CIC: Resource List flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

Computing in the Classroom Resource List

You can access the reading list for this course by selecting the link above. In order to view some resources on the list, you must be logged in with your EASE account.

For more information on getting the most out of your courses Resource List, have a look at this video.

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CIC: Semester 2, Week 7: Live lessons

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:04 +0000

CIC: Semester 2, Week 7: Live lessons flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

The purpose of the first week is for you to learn about running large live online events for young learners. This week we’ll be working with Craig Steele, Director at the company Digital Skills Education, who is very experienced in computer science education.

Work through one of Digital Skills Education’s previous lessons:. (Although they are initially live events, they are also available for learners to complete after the initial event).“How to Steal A Pizza” and “Data Selfie” are good ones to start with.
Watch this clip showing highlights from the live event “Defend the Hospital” where learners had to defend a group of hospitals from a live cyber attack .Prepare one or two questions to ask Craig about how he designed his previous events to ask him in the class. You could ask a technical question or a question about the educational/teaching side of the project.
Write a reflective blog post or a post for Piazza about the pilot session. Comment on:
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this sort of large-scale live event?
2. What kind of educational theories from semester 1 apply to these lessons?
3. What could Craig and his team do to improve this live lesson?
4. Do you have any ideas for future live event topics?
During the class, give constructive feedback to Craig about the live lesson approach.

Learners' feedback on the Live Lesson

I thought you might be interested to see the children's evaluation of the Defend the Rhino live lesson which Craig will talk about. It might give you ideas for your own evaluation.

*************

Hi All,

Jumatatu saved once more! Here's a summary of the stats.

We have recorded 600 engagements for Defend The Rhino on 10/02. The overwhelming majority of these are engagements during the live event.

Feedback was submitted by 119 learners

Would you be interested in taking part in another Data Skills Live event?

Yes - 88%

No - 12%

Would you recommend this activity to a friend?

Yes - 88%

No - 12%

How did you feel about this activity?

How would you describe the live lesson to a friend?

(general observations)

48 responses mentioned ‘fun’

What did you learn today that you didn’t know before?

(general observations)

The most frequent type of responses mention information about rhinos/conservation/poaching
Many mentions of cameras/using data science/using computers

What did you enjoy most?

(general observations)

45 responses mention ‘saving’ [the rhinos]
Several responses mention specific data steps, or using data

What did you enjoy least?

(general observations)

28 responses read ‘nothing’
Several mentions of it being ‘slow’ (unclear if activity, or the general pacing)
Several comments about the volume (see below)

How would you describe your gender?

Girl - 44%

Boy - 40%

Prefer not to say - 11%

In another way - 5%

Things to note 🤔:

Lots of people were playing in pairs. We only record one engagement (“play”) per pair. It might be worth updating the sign in modal to ask if people are playing 1 player or as 2 players.
Several comments about the volume. Teachers may not have realised the audio from the live-video would be an important part of the event. It seems like one school (Duns PS) might have been playing the sound to the class a bit quiet (likely due to small or cheap speakers)
Lots of iPad and Chrome OS users. This activity works on iPad, but it’s not the best experience due to having to type in terminal commands. A future consideration might be to optimise the app so it works well on iPad. The app works well with no issues on ChromeOS.
Everyone turned up on time. Unlike some of our other events, most classes seemed to turn up at the correct time and were ready to start playing by around 5 past the hour.
Some schools didn’t submit feedback. Worth following up with teachers?

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CIC: Semester 2, Week 5: Assessing Programming

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:04 +0000

CIC: Semester 2, Week 5: Assessing Programming flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

We continue the theme of assessing learning about computer science this week by focussing on an automatic method of evaluating Scratch code through static analysis. This approach has the advantage of providing instant feedback for programs written in an entry level language used by hundreds of thousands of learners. It’s not perfect, of course, but it is interesting. As you learn more about Dr Scratch, think about whether it would be possible to do something similar for the first programming language you learned. What would Dr Haskell be like?

~~Download the~~ ~~sample children’s Scratch games. Pick three of your favourite games and upload them to~~ ~~Dr Scratch~~ ~~for assessment. For each game, look at the feedback from Dr Scratch and then look at the source code. Do you think the feedback is fair? Is it helpful?~~
Read the paper about Dr Scratch. (You can get free access through UoE)
Make notes on:
1. Does Dr Scratch measure what it intends to? How do you know?
2. Could this assessment be used to help children learn? Or it is a way to measure progress?
3. Do you think the assessment can distinguish between poor and good performances?
4. Under what circumstances would you advise teachers (or your classmates) to use this?
If you have done Scratch programming with children recently, please bring along a sample program to the class if you can.
Make notes about how you will evaluate your materials for report 2. You can discuss your ideas with me and your fellow students in the class on Thursday, or put them on Piazza if you can’t attend the live session. You should consider:
1. What are you evaluating?
2. Who will evaluate it?
3. What sort of information do you need to collect?
4. How will you analyse the information?

Files

semester2week5noanswers.pptx (263.55 KB)

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CIC: Semester 2, Week 2: Computing Education in the UK

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:03 +0000

CIC: Semester 2, Week 2: Computing Education in the UK flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

We will now turn our attention to computing education in the UK, and other countries in the world. You’ll read about how computing education in the UK was shaken up in 2012 when the Royal Society published a damning report about the state of computing education and whether the situation had improved five years later when they reviewed it again. You’ll also research what computing education is like in another country, and think of your own solutions to improving CS Education.

Read the executive summary and recommendations from the Royal Society After the Reboot Report. If you have time, read the full report. Are you aware of any changes since this report was written in 2017?
Research the computing curriculum in a country of your choice. It can be anywhere you like, as long as it is not in the UK or the country where you were educated.
Write a summary of what you find and post it to the discussion board. You should write about: which country you picked and why; when children first learn about computing in that country; whether it is formally written into the curriculum or whether it is an optional extra; whether they can study for a formal computing qualification; how you think computing education in the country is different to what you learned about computing education in Scotland.
Read and comment on the summaries of the other students. If you happen to have experience of the school system they are describing, tell them about your experiences.
Think about what you have learned about the state of computing education in the UK and your experiences of working in Scottish schools so far. Are there good practices in other countries which we could adopt? Discuss this with your classmates. Write a paragraph for a letter to Scottish Government about “how to make CS education better in Scotland”. (You can do this jointly with a friend if you like). Post the paragraph to the discussion board for this week or on your learning log.

Class slides are here

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CIC: Semester 2, Week 6: code comprehension

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:03 +0000

CIC: Semester 2, Week 6: code comprehension flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

This week we’re looking at another aspect of teaching programming – code comprehension. The key idea here is that learners should be explicitly taught to read and understand code. This is in contrast to previous approaches to programming instruction where it was assumed that the primary activity for novices should be reading code.

Read the Raspberry Pi short article about code comprehension to give you an overview of the topic:
Time for a deeper dive! Read the article about code comprehension by Donaldson and Cutts (2018). If there are sections you don’t understand, highlight them as you’ll have a chance to talk to the author later this week.
Write in your own words: what is the notional machine? Why is it a useful concept? Add your writing to your learning log or Piazza.
Attend the online tutorial (on Wednesday) to hear one of the authors (Peter Donaldson) talk about his work and see a demo of the TRACS technique. Please prepare questions to ask Peter in advance.
After the online tutorial: practice the TRACS technique by completing an example worksheet. If you couldn’t attend the class to see Peter’s demo, watch the video first.

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CIC: Semester 2, Week 4: Inclusion and decolonising the curriculum

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:03 +0000

CIC: Semester 2, Week 4: Inclusion and decolonising the curriculum flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

The topic for this week is inclusion and diversity in computer science education. We will study movements to diversify the computing workforce, and to decolonise the curriculum, and consider why this is important.

Read this article (p67-69 of Hello World magazine, issue 16) about decolonising the CS curriculum.
Read the executive summary of the NCWIT Status of Women in Computing report. This gives a picture of gender equality in computer science in the US. (If you want the latest figures, see https://ncwit.org/resource/bythenumbers/) What do you think the statistics would look like in your home country? Check. Were you right?
Watch some of the British Sign Language videos on Computing, Data Science or Cyber security, for example processor and buses videos. Do they look symbolically and conceptually as you would expect?
https://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/computinghome.html Computing Science
https://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/datahome.html Data Science
https://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/BSL/cyberhome.html Cyber Security
Collaborate with another student to create a poster or a short video about a forgotten superstar of computer science. If you don’t know anyone in the class, why not go to the Discord Server to find someone to work with (see Learn for the link). You can look at https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/celebrating-diversity-in-computing/ to give you ideas. Feel free to work with an AI artist such as DALLE-2.
1. EITHER pick one of the people who features in one of the Teach London Computing diversity posters and find out more about them. Create a short video describing their work, and why it is important.
2. OR choose a computer scientist who has overcome adversity to excel in their field. Make a poster about their achievements. (They can be contemporary or historical).
3. Put your work on your learning log, or Piazza for the other students to see.
4. Comment on the work of the other students on their learning log or Piazza.
5. Bring your work from this week to the live tutorial to share with the other students.

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CIC: Semester 2

flittlet — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:52:02 +0000

CIC: Semester 2 flittlet Tue, 18/07/2023 - 15:52

Week 1: Evaluation and assessment of computational thinking

Week 2: The context of computing education in the UK

Week 3: Formative assessment and misconceptions

Week 4: Inclusion and decolonising the curriculum

Week 5: Assessment of programming

Week 6: Code comprehension

Week 7: How to design a large-scale online live lesson

Week 8: AI literacy

Week 9: Code First

Week 10: Peer feedback on materials

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