programming, we allowed them to experience a connection between the physical world and digital world, exploring new creative interactions using programming beyond the computer screen. What’s more, by applying wires with clips, they experienced programming in “real life.” As in the first workshop, all teams managed to create their games, complete the extended curriculum, and present their games to other workshop participants.

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

Our interventions, introducing programming as a social and tangible activity, changed the dynamic of the Coding Pirates workshops. We saw how the social dynamic was distinctly different in our workshops compared with previous workshops. Including social interaction as part of the workshop design may hold potential for attracting and retaining more diverse participation (e.g., diversity in gender and social background), as it may change the perception of what programming entails, thus potentially retaining participants such as the 13-year-old girl mentioned earlier.

Our findings go beyond the agenda of inclusion. One of the challenges experienced by Coding Pirates teachers is that participants feel anxiety and are reluctant to present and share their ideas and accomplishments in front of the whole class. Indeed, it can be demanding to stand in front of others and present what you have created. Interestingly, this was not an issue during our workshops. Instead, our participants expressed a desire to share and present their accomplishments to fellow participants and referred to their work as a shared and joined task instead of an individual performance.

For example, they said, “I wouldn’t
mind presenting in front of everybody
in the class” and “You have someone
to back you up if you forget
something,” which accentuates their
perception of coding as collaborative
and social. The social and tangible
approaches applied to programming
seem to accelerate and stimulate
participants’ eagerness to display
their digital products and help others.
In particular, a quote from the second
workshop stands out. A participant
was frustrated and expressed giving
up, somewhat loudly, when another
participant yelled back in
encouragement, “You just need to
continue! It gets much more fun
soon!” The first participant managed
to overcome his frustrations and
succeed.

Both workshops achieved great success with regard to collaboration within teams and within the whole class. While the hats were originally designed to explain the roles in pair programming, they turned out to have a far stronger impact than first anticipated. The hats became a manifestation of the social coherence across the class. Expressions such as “Doesn’t your navigator listen to you either?” being shared in a playful manner across the room, addressing participants wearing similar hats, demonstrated how each participant was part of a team, a sub-group, and the class simultaneously. Being able to monitor how other participants collaborate, while experiencing visual similarity, facilitated social interaction. The experience of belonging further supported participants in having confidence in sharing ideas and helping out others. In both workshops, the social interaction was central, not only because of pair programming, but also due to the inclusive social characteristic of the tasks and exercises. Two participants exchanged information after the workshop and agreed to continue their work. Finding new ways to create age-appropriate computational thinking [ 5] is important. Our interventions facilitated the experience of programming as socially embedded, and Coding Pirates were able to transform everyday objects into computational artifacts.

When conceptually approaching introduction to programming as social and tangible human-computer activity, we have the potential to develop new ways for teaching programming that foster inclusion.

DOI: 10.1145/3137099 © 2017 ACM 1072-5520/17/11 $15.00

We argue that strategies of moving beyond the keyboard and screen, including considerations of the socially embedded context, are relevant for programming at various levels of education and participation—high school, college, or university. By creating new classroom experiences that foster engagement for computational thinking in the long term, we can promote increased participation in designing digital technologies and shaping society for all.

Endnotes

1. Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hermandez, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., Millner, A., Rosenbaum, E., Silver, J., Silverman, B., and Kafai, Y. Scratch: Programming for all. Communications of the ACM 52, 11 (2009), 60–67.

2. Beginners’ Mind Collective and Shaw, D. Makey Makey: Improvising tangible and nature-based user interfaces. Proc. of the Sixth International Conference on Tangible, embedded and Embodies Interaction. ACM, New York, 2012.

3. Werner, L. and Denning, J. Pair programming in middle school. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 42, 1 (2009), 29–49

4. Bjørn, P. and Hertzum, M. Project-based collaborative learning: Negotiating leadership and commitment in virtual teams. Proc. of the 5th Conference on Human Computer Interaction in Southern Africa. ACM, 2006.

5. Wing, J.M. Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM 49, 3 (2006), 33–35.

 

Olivia L. Tabel is finishing her bachelor’s degree in communication and IT at the University of Copenhagen, currently at UC Santa Barbara. → [e-mail]

Jonathan Jensen is finishing his bachelor’s degree in communication and I T at the University of Copenhagen. → [e-mail]

Martin Dybdal established the DIKU branch of Coding Pirates and is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science (DIKU) at the University of Copenhagen. → [e-mail]

Pernille Bjørn is a professor of computer-supported cooperative work in the human-centered computing section in the Department of Computer Science (DIKU) at the University of Copenhagen. → [e-mail]