Informatics in Education

In today’s society, creativity plays a key role, emphasizing the importance of its development in K-12 education. Computing education may be an alternative for students to extend their creativity by solving problems and creating computational artifacts. Yet, there is little systematic evidence available to support this claim, also due to the lack of assessment models. This article presents SCORE, a model for the assessment of creativity in the context of computing education in K-12. Based on a mapping study, the model and a self-assessment questionnaire are systematically developed. The evaluation, based on 76 responses from K-12 students, indicates a high internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.961) and confirmed the validity of the instrument suggesting only the exclusion of 3 items that do not seem to be measuring the concept. As such, the model represents a first step aiming at the systematic improvement of teaching creativity as part of computing education.

Creativity has emerged as an important 21st-century competency. Although it is traditionally associated with arts and literature, it can also be developed as part of computing education. Therefore, this article -presents a systematic mapping of approaches for assessing creativity based on the analysis of computer programs created by the students. As result, only ten approaches reported in eleven articles have been encountered. These reveal the absence of a commonly accepted definition of product creativity customized to computer education, confirming only originality as one of the well-established characteristics. Several approaches seem to lack clearly defined criteria for effective, efficient and useful creativity assessment. Diverse techniques are used including rubrics, mathematical models and machine learning, supporting manual and automated approaches. Few performed a comprehensive evaluation of the proposed approach regarding their reliability and validity. These results can help instructors to choose and adopt assessment approaches and guide researchers by pointing out shortcomings.

Although Machine Learning (ML) is integrated today into various aspects of our lives, few understand the technology behind it. This presents new challenges to extend computing education early to ML concepts helping students to understand its potential and limits. Thus, in order to obtain an overview of the state of the art on teaching Machine Learning concepts in elementary to high school, we carried out a systematic mapping study. We identified 30 instructional units mostly focusing on ML basics and neural networks. Considering the complexity of ML concepts, several instructional units cover only the most accessible processes, such as data management or present model learning and testing on an abstract level black-boxing some of the underlying ML processes. Results demonstrate that teaching ML in school can increase understanding and interest in this knowledge area as well as contextualize ML concepts through their societal impact.

Teaching computational thinking in K-12 as a 21th century skill is becoming increasingly important. Computational thinking describes a specific way of reasoning building on concepts and processes derived from algorithms and programming. One way to teach these concepts is games as an effective and efficient alternative. This article presents SplashCode, a low-cost board game to reinforce basic algorithms and programming concepts. The game was developed in a systematic way following an instructional design process, and applied and evaluated in a Brazilian public school with a total of 65 students (grade 5 to 9). First results indicate that the game can have a positive impact on motivation, learning experience, and students' learning, as well as contribute positively to social interaction, relevance, and fun. Results of this study may assist in the selection of games as an instructional strategy and/or in the development of new games for teaching computational thinking.

As computing has become an integral part of our world, demand for teaching computational thinking in K-12 has increased. One of its basic competences is programming, often taught by learning activities without a predefined solution using block-based visual programming languages. Automatic assessment tools can support teachers with their assessment and grading as well as guide students throughout their learning process. Although being already widely used in higher education, it remains unclear if such approaches exist for K-12 computing education. Thus, in order to obtain an overview, we performed a systematic mapping study. We identified 14 approaches, focusing on the analysis of the code created by the students inferring computational thinking competencies related to algorithms and programming. However, an evident lack of consensus on the assessment criteria and instructional feedback indicates the need for further research to support a wide application of computing education in K-12 schools.

Diverse initiatives have emerged to popularize the teaching of computing in K-12 mainly through programming. This, however, may not cover other important core computing competencies, such as Software Engineering (SE). Thus, in order to obtain an overview of the state of the art and practice of teaching SE competences in K-12, we carried out a systematic mapping study. We identified 17 instructional units mostly adopting the waterfall model or agile methodologies focusing on the main phases of the software process. However, there seems to be a lack of details hindering large-scope adoption of these instructional units. Many articles also do not report how the units have been developed and/or evaluated. However, results demonstrating both the viability and the positive contribution of initiating SE education already in K-12, indicate a need for further research in order to improve computing education in schools contributing to the popularization of SE competencies.

The development of computational thinking is a major topic in K-12 education. Many of these experiences focus on teaching programming using block-based languages. As part of these activities, it is important for students to receive feedback on their assignments. Yet, in practice it may be difficult to provide personalized, objective and consistent feedback. In this context, automatic assessment and grading has become important. While there exist diverse graders for text-based languages, support for block-based programming languages is still scarce. This article presents CodeMaster, a free web application that in a problem-based learning context allows to automatically assess and grade projects programmed with App Inventor and Snap!. It uses a rubric measuring computational thinking based on a static code analysis. Students can use the tool to get feedback to encourage them to improve their programming competencies. It can also be used by teachers for assessing whole classes easing their workload.

The management of contemporary software projects is unfeasible without the support of a Project Management (PM) tool. In order to enable the adoption of PM tools in practice, teaching its usage is important as part of computer education. Aiming at teaching PM tools, several approaches have been proposed, such as the development of educational PM tools. However, such approaches are typically limited with respect to content coverage and instructional support. In this context, an important technique is the provision of instructional feedback, which is essential in order to help the students to learn based on the evaluation of their own actions. In order to take advantage of this technique, this article proposes its employment in an Instructional Unit, being integrated into the PM tool dotProject+, providing automated feedback based on the project plan being developed with the tool. This technique has been evaluated through a series of case studies.

The teaching of sorting algorithms is an essential topic in undergraduate computing courses. Typically the courses are taught through traditional lectures and exercises involving the implementation of the algorithms. As an alternative, this article presents the design and evaluation of three educational games for teaching Quicksort and Heapsort. The games have been evaluated in a series of case studies, including 23 applications of the games in data structures courses at the Federal University of Santa Catarina with the participation of a total of 371 students. The results provide a first indication that such educational games can contribute positively to the learning outcome on teaching sorting algorithms, supporting the students to achieve learning on higher levels as well as to increase the students' motivation on this topic. The social interaction the games promote allows the students to cooperate or compete while playing, making learning more fun.