Using App Inventor & History as a Gateway to Engage ... · Using App Inventor & History as a Gateway to Engage African American Students in Computer Science Yerika Jimenez Department

Using App Inventor & History as a Gateway to Engage African American Students in Computer

Science

Yerika Jimenez Department of Computer and Information Science and

Engineering University of Florida Gainesville, Florida

Christina Gardner-McCune

Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering

University of Florida Gainesville, Florida

Abstract— Unlike enrollment in undergraduate computer

science degree programs, there are no gender or ethnic imbalances in K-12 enrollment. While such disparities are seen at particular schools, such disparities do not exist in disciplinary courses such as history, math, or science where all students are required to take these courses. This paper discusses an approach to broaden minority participation in computing through the integration of Computer Science (CS) into a history course. This poster proposes an alignment between computational thinking and historical thinking that makes history courses an attractive fit for CS integration. It also presents results from the pilot study of a project- based cross-disciplinary curriculum using MIT App inventor that leverages students’ interests in mobile technology to facilitate the creation of historical mobile apps. This curricular approach is built on a theoretical framework rooted in Constructivist and Constructionist learning where students construct and produce knowledge, artifacts, and technology rather than consume them. Our initial results suggest that students were engaged in the material and were enthusiastic about the creation of their mobile app.

Keywords— App Inventor; Broadening Participation; African

American Student; computational thinking

I. INTRODUCTION

Tools like MIT App Inventor, Scratch, and Alice aim to make programming enjoyable and accessible to novices [1,2]. The difference, and perhaps an important reason for the attention MIT App Inventor has garnered, is that it allows people to create apps for smartphones. Given the popularity and ubiquity of mobile phones among this current generation of middle and high school students, MIT App Inventor seems to hold great potential for attracting a new and older generation of students to computing and computational thinking.

With the rising interest in computational thinking and the lack of computer science classes available for rural African- American and Latino(a) students in middle and high school, we saw MIT App Inventor as an opportunity to embed computational thinking and mobile app development into a history course.

One might ask, “why history?” Our answer is “why not history?” Traditionally K-12 history courses have earned a bad reputation for not engaging students because of their focus on memorization of facts. This is particularly true for African American and Latino populations [3,4,5]. However, new approaches of teaching K-12 history focus on more actively engaging student in the learning process through analysis of historical artifacts and construction of historical narratives.

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This learning process is called historical thinking and it has features that align quite nicely with aspects of computational thinking as defined by CSTA’s operational definition of computational thinking. This situation makes history a prime candidate to introduce students to computer science.

Our first attempt at exploring the integration of computational thinking into a history course was through the design and implementation of the Workshop for African- Americans Thinking Computational and Historically (WATCH) Program [8]. We envisioned an opportunity for students to learn Computer Science (CS) i n the context of a history course for which they were already enrolled and to leverage students’ interest in mobile apps though mobile application development to help them learn History and Computer Science.

II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Alignment of Computer Science and History

In designing the WATCH program, we used a constructivist-learning framework to support both computational thinking and historical thinking. At the core of Constructivist learning is the theory that people learn through actively constructing meaning from their experiences and interactions in the world [6]. Historical thinking builds on this notion of active construction of meaning through interpretation of historical documents and artifacts to construct historical narratives. A core tenant of historical thinking is the notion that there is no one “right” historical narrative but that historical documents and artifacts can be used to tell a multiplicity of narratives. Creation of such narratives requires students to be comfortable with ambiguity when working with open-ended problems; to engage in breaking down the origins, intended purposes, and audiences of historical artifacts and documents; and to find themes in the documents and artifacts and weave them back together again into a coherent narrative structure.

The focus of historical thinking on students’ comfort with ambiguity, working with open-ended problems, and the process of breaking down artifacts into smaller parts, and abstracting out themes, sparked our research team’s interest in aligning history with computer science. In particular, we saw an alignment between historical thinking’s emphasis on breaking down documents and artifacts and finding themes to construct a historical narrative and the emphasis of similar dispositional practices in CSTA’s operational definition of Computational thinking for K-12 Education [7].

CSTA’s operational definition characterizes computational thinking as “a problems solving process that includes formulating problems in a way that enables us to use a computer and other tools to help solve them. Logically organizing and analyzing data, automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps), and Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of resources [7].”

A. Support for Constructionist CS Learning & Computational Thinking

There are a number of Computer Science tools designed to support novice programmers in learning and using computer science concepts. However, subsets of these tools are also designed to support students in the creation of artifacts that students find personally meaningful. The theoretical background of tools such as Scratch and App Inventor is rooted in Seymour Papers’ Constructionist approach to supporting learning, which has its origins in the Constructivist Theory of learning.

The Constructivist theory of learning focuses on students actively creating and modifying thoughts, ideas, and understandings based on experiences [9]. In Seymour Papert’s vision of learning and knowing, students' personal and social experiences guide the learning process and students learn particularly well from constructing artifacts [5].

Therefore, tools like App Inventor and Scratch have been designed intentionally to shift students from being consumers of technology to producers of technology through construction of artifacts. This genre of tools has been characterized as Constructionist Toolkits [1]. These tools are actively used in after-school programs and summer camps, and some schools to support novice programming and artistic expression.

III. PILOT STUDY

This poster presents results from an initial pilot study of the WATCH program. The goal of the pilot study was to measure the extent to which we could leverage students’ interest in mobile technology to foster their interest in creating mobile apps while aligning computational and historical thinking. The curriculum was divided into eight sessions, 75 minutes per sessions, spread over three weeks. The first two sessions dealt specifically with historical thinking. The third session was the plantation visit. The fourth session encompassed students debriefing about the trip and storyboarded to begin conceptual development of their historical apps. Sessions fifth, sixth, and seventh focused specifically on CS fundamentals principles, computational thinking, and the development of mobile apps.

We recruited 30 students from rural low socio-economic background. These students were split between two classes of 15 students each. Across the two classes there were a total of 11 boys and 19 girls, 27 of whom identified as African American, two as Latino, and one as mixed. The instructors for the summer program were one undergraduate student and three faculty members.

The results presented here are taken from the pre and post-survey focused on students’ prior experience and experience in the WATCH program and their attitudes and perceptions of CS.

IV.RESULTS

A. Pre-Survey: Students’ Interest in CS Before Participating in the WATCH Program

Pre-survey data indicated that 26 out of 30 students had no programming experience prior to the study. However, 4 students indicated that they had taken business computing or desktop publishing classes at their school. Thorough conversation with the students these courses often did not cover

programming.

The pre-survey indicated that after hearing about the program 26 out of 30 participants (86%) were interested in creating mobile applications and they wanted to learn the process of developing them. In particular, 63% of students (n=19) indicated that they were interested in learning about the process of developing apps and learning about computer science; 23% of students (n = 7) expressed the importance of creating an app that others could use.

B. Post-Survey: Students Experiences in Perseverance

Overall, students were engaged in the computer science material and the app development process. They were enthusiastic about completing their final historical app. However, at times some students were not as engaged as others. We saw this as an opportunity to help students develop perseverance so the instructors worked with these students one-on-one to address the area(s) in which they were struggling. This increased students’ engagement and motivation to finish their app and show it to their friends.

C. Post-Survey: Students’ Engagement and Perceptions of App Design After Participating in the Program

After participating in the program, 77% of participants (n=23) agreed or strongly agreed that creating mobile apps was fun (M=4.03, SD=1.08). 74% of participants (n=22) agreed or strongly agreed that they were engaged while making their app (M= 4, SD=1.06). 86% of participants (n=24) indicated that they would be interested in creating another app.

Some of their reasons for wanting to create another mobile app included a focus on the enjoyment of creating an app (e.g., “Creating my first app was very interesting); the challenging process of creating the app (e.g., “It challenged my brain.”); the final app and potential use of app (e.g., “It was fun and I like that people can actually download something I made”) and the sense of pride from creating the app themselves (e.g., “so I can show others that I know how to do it.”).

These results suggest that although students initially lacked experience programming, they were excited about learning how to create a mobile application and indicated interest in continuing to create apps.

REFERENCES

[1] J. M. Resnick, A. Bruckman and F. Martin, “Pianos Not Stereos: Creating Computational Construction Kits." Interactions 3, no. 6, 1996, pp41-50.

[2] S. Cooper, W. Dann, and R. Pausch, "Teaching objects-first in introductory computer science." Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE '03 35, no. 1, 2003, pp191-195.

[3] T. Epstein. Interpreting national history: race, identity, and pedagogy in classrooms and communities. New York: Routledge, 2009.

[4] J. King, "Diaspora literacy and consciousness in the struggle against miseducation in the black community." The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 3, 1992,317-40.

[5] J. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: New Press; 1995.

[6] S. Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

[7] V. Barr, C. Stephenson. "Bringing computational thinking to K-12: what is Involved and what is the role of the computer science education community?" ACM Inroads 2, no. 1, 2011, pp48-54

[8] L. King, C. Gardner-McCune, P. Vargas, Y. Jimenez, “Re-discovering and re-creating African American historical accounts through mobile apps: The role of mobile technology in history education” The Journal of Social Studies Research, 2014.

[9] I, Harel, S. Papert. Constructionism: ResearchmReports and Essays, PsycCRITIQUES 37, no. 10, 1991.