This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to build a system called CyberCollage as a cyberlearning tool to support computational thinking in STEM education at the middle school level. CyberCollage will enable the collective programming of educational games and computational science simulations through a social media approach that uniquely combines real-time synchronous collaboration with web-based multi end-user Programming. For example, multiple students would be able to work together on a Frogger game. While one student may be programming the frog a different student might be working on the turtles. Similarly, students can collaborate on computational science applications that explore questions such as 'can your frog live in my pond?' Both game design and computational science applications will be directly responsive to the computational thinking need of K-12 STEM education through cyberlearning technology.
Cyberlearning technology addresses concrete needs in K-12 computer science education. The proposed combination of high accessibility through Web interfaces, increased motivational prospective through social media, and tested curriculum integrated into required computer education middle school courses is likely to reach a vast audience and attract women and underrepresented communities. The inclusion of strategies to support computational science applications will be relevant to STEM education and, through their integration into public schools, enhance public science understanding. The project has access to disadvantaged communities such as inner city, remote rural and Native American schools that can serve as testbeds for evaluation beyond Phase I. From a research point of view, the unique conceptual as well as technical aspects of Collective Programming are likely to result in significant contributions to programming language design, social interface design, social computing, and end-user programming. The common framework employed between game design and computational science has the potential to discover both, positive and negative, evidence for educational notions of transfer that are highly relevant to computational thinking.
Problem: Motivating Computer Science Education. As indicated by Chris Stephenson, Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), enrollments in undergraduate computer science programs may, at the moment, no longer be on a downward slide, but now is a pivotal time to establish a systemic computer science education pipeline starting in K-12. This needs to be addressed early in the education pipeline by reconceptualizing the computational environments and the STEM education curricula employed at the K-12 level. Game design/programming is becoming increasingly popular as a way to attract more students to computer science related courses. CSTA has reported that high school game design courses moving beyond introductory computer science (CS) and advanced placement (AP) courses have increased from a mere 0.6% in 2007 to 10% in 2009. Unfortunately, in the same time period the overall percentage of schools offering computer science courses beyond introductory CS and AP courses has actually dropped significantly from 89% in 2007 to 74% in 2009. The CSTA survey does not break down the gender distribution for specific courses but in the four semesters that game design courses have been offered in the – generally considered progressive – Boulder Valley Schools District at the high school level, only one girl has taken the course. Offering motivational courses such as game design at the high school level is likely to be too late. Challenge Addressed: Lack of Classroom Support. The CSTA study ranks the top three challenges in teaching computer science. Number one is the issue of rapidly changing technology. There is little that can be done about this issue aside of shifting from skill to fluency models by focusing more on intellectual problem solving skills instead of highly specific contemporary skills such as how to use a specific application. The idea of computational thinking is relevant to this challenge as it defines universal problem solving approaches that transcend quickly decaying application knowledge. The number three challenge is the lack of curriculum resources. We have developed and are in the process of systematically evaluating the Scalable Game Design curriculum in a number of diverse environments. Challenge number two, and the main focus of this project, is the perceived lack of support. Especially in inner city schools, classroom management is enormously challenged by a large number of students, e.g., 40 or more, students with English language deficiencies, and students with limited reading skills. The approach taken in the Scalable Game Design project is the use of community and tribal college students who have been trained together with their teachers. We have noticed that the presence of the community/tribal college student makes a huge difference—especially in large classes. Unfortunately, this approach may not be easily scalable. This is where modern communication technologies can help. Innovation: Collective Programming Cyberlearning Tools. We have built a system called CyberCollage as a Collective Programming environment employing and extending social media approaches to reconzeptualize programming, in general, and game design, in particular, as a social process supported through cyberlearning technology. That is, CyberCollage is a technology that allows a group of students to collectively work together in real-time on game design projects. Technically speaking this innovation pushes the notion of authoring tools by having created what is probably the world’s first 100% Web-based Collective Programming cyberlearning tool to use, modify and to author games and simulations. CyberCollage is a Cyberlearning tool that allows students to acquire essential 21st century information technology skills by creating games and science simulations. CyberCollage supports teachers and students by making programming a social process where groups of students can work on the same project together. This makes learning not only more enjoyable but also simplifies learning of hard topics such as science and programming. In addition to learning critical problem solving skills students also learn to work in groups and to collaborate. Phase I of this project has built a prototype of CyberCollage and has tested its usefulness with students in Colorado and Wyoming. The evaluation study demonstrated that CyberCollage is a promising approach to support web-based collaborative design of games and simulations. Real-time, synchronous design and programming were accessible and engaging for middle grade students, demonstrating that they could collaboratively develop a working game in one to two hours. In terms of technical feasibility, the study concludes that CyberCollage offers a platform that supports a web-based authoring in ways that elicit more ambitious design goals, due to the benefit of multiple contributors and the opportunity to challenge ideas and programming methods.
