Team Education 2.0 – Weekly Post by Katie Petty

Interesting weekly reading this week. I enjoyed reviewing past projects in the context of instructional design. Application-level learning gives a great framework to follow. I settled on my Alice project, where I created a game that helped players understand higher levels of English comprehension from a grammar perspective. In this post, I will share my players learning through the various levels as well as my own when creating the game. Here is the question for this week and my responses:

Question 1 - From the previous course, CSTE5336, you had created various multimedia projects which can be incorporated for teaching and training purpose. Review the 9 types of learning in the Synthesis page. How do you apply the material you created last semester to fulfill the levels of learning? (Hint: You can choose any project you had completed to provide the details of how it incorporates with the Concept (What), Procedure (How), and Principles (Why) in the subject area.)

Concept:

According to our reading, a concept is “a group or class of particulars which have something in common” (Reigeluth, 2012).  It is the establishing of the foundation of concepts that begins any learning journey. In the Alice programming environment it is the introduction of objects at the start of the game or story that establishes these concepts. According to a UCLA research study, repetitive conceptual learning established the beginning of basic CS algorithmic understanding, which is the beginning of higher level programming. The study was conducted with Middle School Students (Campe, Denner & Werner, 2010). I found this to be true in my work with Alice as I kept introducing various items and repeating them keeping them in groups. The more I did this, the better I got at understanding how the language worked and saw examples of my understanding shine through when we moved on to basic HTML Programming.

Procedure:

This is the “how” something is accomplished. For example, how do we write a solid paragraph or how do we finish that algebraic equation. It is a sequencing of steps. In Richard Baldwin’s introductory guide to programming in Alice, he walks us through how the simple act of programming in Alice is a procedure process (Balwin, 2007). In order to make anything happen in the world of Alice, you have to tell your “program” exactly what do to – step-by-step. Likewise, when I created my game in Alice to help students understand English concepts, I had to walk students through a variety of sequences that became more complicated with each task accomplished. Natural next step if you ask me.

Principles:

In the world of Alice, you could call this level the “if / then” statement. Basically, if you program your character to do something, you have to state a reaction or a then condition. This caused the players to consider situations and actually apply reasoning and learning to the game. It also required myself as the programmer to consider the outcome and delve into a much higher level of thinking.

The Alice Programming Environment is an excellent learning tool both in the programming aspect and the actual implementation – whether it is a story or a game, learning will occur if one follows these levels. It shouldn’t be hard because the design of Alice conforms to this.

Our second question and my response is as follows:

Question 2. Share your reflection after complete the Self-Test. (No references are required.)

Wow, I thought the self-test would be very basic in nature as many online self-assessments are. However, it was pretty detailed and required me to think. The “trick question” section was interesting as well. I scored fairly well but definitely need some more practice working around in this environment. While I comprehend the material, it is not second nature and the self-test really showed me this simple fact.

Sorry for the long post, but it was a topic that deserved a little more detail.

References:

Baldwin, R. (2007). Introduction to alice programming. Retrieved from http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3673761/Introduction-to-Alice-Programming.htm.

Campe, S., Denner, J., & Werner, L. (2010). Children learning computer science concepts via alice game-programming. (Master's thesis, University of California).  Retrieved on Feb. 21, 2012 at http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCwQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdb.grinnell.edu%2Fsigcse%2Fsigcse2012%2FProgram%2FviewAcceptedProposal.pdf%3FsessionType%3Dpaper%26sessionNumber%3D233&ei=ymFET6qtEs-msAK84dXCDw&usg=AFQjCNFxwuJh6QOLEulVmR5DKBY_zEz1ow.

Reigeluth, C. M. (2012). Instructional-Design Theories Home page. Retrieved January 2^nd, 2012, from http://www.indiana.edu/~idtheory/methods/methods.html.