Assessing software development skills among K-6 learners in a project-based workshop with scratch
Author
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Gutierrez, Francisco
Author
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Simmonds, Jocelyn
Author
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Hitschfeld, Nancy
Author
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Casanova, Cecilia
Author
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Sotomayor, Cecilia
Author
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Penã-Araya, Vanessa
Admission date
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2019-05-31T15:19:53Z
Available date
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2019-05-31T15:19:53Z
Publication date
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2018
Cita de ítem
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ACM/IEEE 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training. 2018
Identifier
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02705257
Identifier
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10.1145/3183377.3183396
Identifier
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https://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/169389
Abstract
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Recent literature reports a fair amount of initiatives on how to
engage younger populations in achieving computational literacy.
However, there is considerable less research on how to effectively
deliver software development skills in a way that can be accepted
and ultimately adopted by this user group. As a way to bridge this
gap, we ran an extracurricular project-based workshop, targeting
10-12 years old learners with no prior coding experience, delivered over five days in the computer labs at the University of Chile.
In this workshop, participants follow hands-on activities where
they acquire the basics of computer programming and develop
a small-scale software application using Scratch. These activities
showcase that good software engineering practices can be taught
to K-6 students, where these students are guided by experienced
computer science undergraduate and graduate students. This paper
presents a descriptive case study that focuses on assessing how K-6
learners assimilate and use these practices when developing their
first computing application in a non-traditional learning experience.
In order to do this, we designed and calibrated a rubric to evaluate the software products generated by the workshop participants.
Our findings provide further evidence that it is indeed possible to
teach initial notions of software engineering to this user group,
structuring these constructs in a non-technical language that can
be assimilated by novice developers. Furthermore, we did not observe significant differences in this matter according to gender and
socio-economic status.