Developing Curriculum and Guidelines for A New Approach of Teaching and Learning Programming with Comics

Image of Edith Law
Image of Sangho Suh

Grant Recipients

Edith Law, Cheriton School of Computer Science

Sangho Suh, Cheriton School of Computer Science

(Project Timeline: January 2022 - December 2022)

Description

  • This project aims to develop a curriculum and corresponding guidelines for a new approach to teaching programming with comics.
    • This project follows previous LITE grant-sponsored research that explored how to promote meaningful learning in computer science courses in a variety of ways.

Questions Investigated

  • How can we make prior research (findings and tools) on teaching programming with comics more accessible to teachers so they can take advantage of them if they are interested in incorporating them into their teaching?
  • How should we create a curriculum (e.g., creative computing curriculum, computational textile curriculum) and guidelines (e.g., curriculum guide) for teaching and learning programming with comics?

Findings

  • Upon studying the evaluations of a reference guide by high school CS teachers, it was revealed that teaching CS through the frames of concept, language, and procedures is a reasonable framework for understanding what is taught in CS.
  • Preliminary feedback from investigating the development of a comic-based learning toolkit for elementary school learners was positive, and the project is under further development with Artshine.

Dissemination/Impact

  • The work was presented at CEMC Summer Conference for Computer Studies Educators.
  • We archived the report to share the findings of our study on the reference guide for teaching programming with comics. The recording of the presentation and the reference guide is also publicly available here.
  • A poster was presented on comic-based learning toolkits for teaching computing to elementary school learners at a premier CS Education conference---the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education 2023.

Implications

  • While developing the curriculum and preparing to share the reference guide with teachers, the applicants were better able to view computing as consisting of learning its concept, language, and procedures, and will further influence how they teach computing.
  • This project has sparked a partnership with Artshine, a locally-based company, that works on delivering art education to children. The partnership aims to develop a toolkit that allows children to explore coding while engaging in comic creation.

Website

Coding Strips - https://codingstrip.github.io/ 

References

[1] Guzdial, Mark, and Barbara Ericson. Introduction to computing and programming in python. New York, NY: Pearson, 2016.

[2] “Creative coding,” Wikipedia, 18 June 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_coding.

[3] Bayliss, Jessica D., and Sean Strout. "Games as a" flavor" of CS1." In Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, pp. 500-504. 2006.

[4] Beck, Robert E., Jennifer Burg, Jesse M. Heines, and Bill Manaris. "Computing and music: A spectrum of sound." In Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, pp. 7-8. 2011.

[5] Burke, Quinn, and Yasmin B. Kafai. "Programming & storytelling: opportunities for learning about coding & composition." In Proceedings of the 9th international conference on interaction design and children, pp. 348-351. 2010.

[6] Resnick, Mitchel, John Maloney, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Natalie Rusk, Evelyn Eastmond, Karen Brennan, Amon Millner et al. "Scratch: programming for all." Communications of the ACM 52, no. 11 (2009): 60-67.

[7] “About Scratch,” September 01, 2021, ​​https://scratch.mit.edu/about.

[8] “ScratchEd,” September 15, 2021, https://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/

[9] Brennan, Karen, and Raquel Jimenez. "The Scratch Educator Meetup." Designing Constructionist Futures: The Art, Theory, and Practice of Learning Designs (2020): 85.

[10] “Scratch Ideas,” September 01, 2021, ​​https://scratch.mit.edu/ideas.

[11] Qiu, Kanjun, Leah Buechley, Edward Baafi, and Wendy Dubow. "A curriculum for teaching computer science through computational textiles." In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children, pp. 20-27. 2013.

[12] Greenberg, Ira, Deepak Kumar, and Dianna Xu. "Creative coding and visual portfolios for CS1." In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 247-252. 2012.

[13] Creative Computing Lab, September 10, 2021, https://creativecomputing.gse.harvard.edu/guide/curriculum.html

[14] Anonymized for review.

[15] Wang, Zezhong, Shunming Wang, Matteo Farinella, Dave Murray-Rust, Nathalie Henry Riche, and Benjamin Bach. "Comparing effectiveness and engagement of data comics and infographics." In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-12. 2019.

[16] Bolton-Gary, Cynthia. "Connecting through Comics: Expanding Opportunities for Teaching and Learning." Online Submission (2012).

[17] Yang, Gene. "Why comics belong in the classroom." (2016).

[18] Kelleher, Caitlin, and Randy Pausch. "Using storytelling to motivate programming." Communications of the ACM 50, no. 7 (2007): 58-64.

[19] Guo, Philip J. "Online python tutor: embeddable web-based program visualization for cs education." In Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, pp. 579-584. 2013.

[20] Anonymized for review.

[21] “Curricula Recommendations,” September 10, 2021, https://www.acm.org/education/curricula-recommendations