ER is a powerful, flexible, teaching and learning tool, encouraging students to construct and control robots using specific programming languages. They help students to turn from passive into active learners as they construct new knowledge and develop fundamental skills by collaborating with their peers and acting as researchers.
Published in Chapter:
Efficiently Prompting Students When Developing Computational Thinking Skills: The Impact of Students' Response Modality
Soumela K. Atmatzidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Chrysanthi N. Βekiari (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), and Stavros N. Demetriadis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 25
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7443-0.ch005
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of student response modality on the development of computational thinking skills in educational robotics activities. Students of an elementary school were divided into three study groups ('Control', 'Selecting', and 'Writing') that implemented activities based on the same teacher guidance while prompted to provide responses of different modalities. The purpose was to engage students in the development of computational thinking skills, focusing on the basic skills of abstraction, generalization, algorithm, modularity, and debugging. These skills were evaluated at different phases during the activity, using different modality (selection, written, and oral) assessment tools. The results suggest that (1) prompting and eliciting thoughts in the form of written or selected answers proves to be a beneficial strategy, and (2) the two groups, ‘Writing' and ‘Selecting', reach the same level of CT skills, which is significantly higher than the level of the control group.