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Computing Curriculum in Middle Schools: An Experience Report

Published: 28 June 2017 Publication History

Abstract

This paper explores the results of a piloting and field-testing of Alice in the Middle East (Alice ME), a computing curriculum for students in Middle Schools in Qatar. Alice ME is a project aimed at designing and delivering a Qatari context appropriate computing curriculum using Alice software. Curricular materials and professional development were created to help participating teachers deliver the course. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the implementation was carried out during all stages of the project. Results show that students who studied computing through Alice ME showed an improvement in their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Moreover, students and teachers became more motivated to learn programing as a result. This paper suggests best practices in teacher training and CS teaching in K-12 schools in Qatar in addition to sharing lessons learned from the process.

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  • (2024)Efeito da promoção do pensamento computacional nas habilidades do século XXI: uma revisão sistemática da literaturaRevista Brasileira de Informática na Educação10.5753/rbie.2024.321332(295-335)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Professional Development in Computational Thinking: A Systematic Literature ReviewACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/364847724:2(1-24)Online publication date: 10-May-2024
  • (2021)Changing Teacher Perceptions about Computational Thinking in Grades 1-6, through a National Training ProgramProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3432542(260-266)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ITiCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
    June 2017
    412 pages
    ISBN:9781450347044
    DOI:10.1145/3059009
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 28 June 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. alice
    2. computational thinking
    3. curriculum evaluation
    4. k-12

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    ITiCSE '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 56 of 175 submissions, 32%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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    ITiCSE '25
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    June 27 - July 2, 2025
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    View all
    • (2024)Efeito da promoção do pensamento computacional nas habilidades do século XXI: uma revisão sistemática da literaturaRevista Brasileira de Informática na Educação10.5753/rbie.2024.321332(295-335)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Professional Development in Computational Thinking: A Systematic Literature ReviewACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/364847724:2(1-24)Online publication date: 10-May-2024
    • (2021)Changing Teacher Perceptions about Computational Thinking in Grades 1-6, through a National Training ProgramProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3432542(260-266)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
    • (2021)Integrating Computer Science and ICT Concepts in a Cohesive Curriculum for Middle School - An Experience ReportProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3432528(966-972)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
    • (2020)Future-Proofing Kiwi Kids Through the Use of Digital TechnologyProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366902(507-513)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
    • (2019)The Effectiveness of Creating Localized Content for Middle School Computing CurriculumProceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3304221.3319778(478-484)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2019
    • (2019)Schools (K–12)The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555.019(547-583)Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
    • (2019)The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research10.1017/9781108654555Online publication date: 15-Feb-2019
    • (2017)COMPUTING IN SCHOOLSOn teaching problem-solving paradigms in K-12 educationACM Inroads10.1145/31485338:4(30-32)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2017

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