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Middle school students using Alice: what can we learn from logging data?

Published: 06 March 2013 Publication History

Abstract

There is growing interest in how we can use computer logging data to improve computational tools and pedagogies to engage children in complex thinking and self-expression, but our techniques lag far behind our theories. Only recently have learning scientists begun to measure, collect, analyze, and report how data informs the science of children's learning. In this paper, we describe our initial efforts towards developing tools to mine computer logging data for information on how to enhance learning opportunities. The data were collected as part of an NSF-funded project, and include logs from 320 middle school students using Alice to program computer games in semester-long courses. We describe some lessons learned and decisions made in the process of reconstructing high-level user actions in Alice from low-level Alice logs.

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  • (2023)Using Foundational CS1 Curricula for Middle School & Early High School Computer Programming EducationProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569877(827-833)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2023)BJC SparksProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569842(451-457)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2021)How do students develop computational thinking? Assessing early programmers in a maze-based online gameComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2021.190324831:2(259-289)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2021
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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '13: Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
March 2013
818 pages
ISBN:9781450318686
DOI:10.1145/2445196
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: 06 March 2013

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Author Tags

  1. Alice
  2. education
  3. educational data mining
  4. middle school

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SIGCSE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 111 of 293 submissions, 38%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Using Foundational CS1 Curricula for Middle School & Early High School Computer Programming EducationProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569877(827-833)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2023)BJC SparksProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569842(451-457)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2021)How do students develop computational thinking? Assessing early programmers in a maze-based online gameComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2021.190324831:2(259-289)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2021
  • (2020)Exploring the Progression of Early Programmers in a Set of Computational Thinking Challenges via Clickstream AnalysisIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2017.27685508:1(256-261)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2020
  • (2018)Assessing Scratch Programmers’ Development of Computational Thinking with Transaction-Level DataTowards Extensible and Adaptable Methods in Computing10.1007/978-981-13-2348-5_30(399-407)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2018
  • (2016)Investigating the Role of Being a Mentor as a Way of Increasing Interest in CSProceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education10.1145/2839509.2844581(297-302)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2016
  • (2015)Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics in ProgrammingProceedings of the 2015 ITiCSE on Working Group Reports10.1145/2858796.2858798(41-63)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2015
  • (2015)How Equity and Inequity Can Emerge in Pair ProgrammingProceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/2787622.2787716(41-50)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2015
  • (2014)Analysis of source code snapshot granularity levelsProceedings of the 15th Annual Conference on Information technology education10.1145/2656450.2656473(21-26)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2014
  • (2013)A Survey on Pre-Processing Educational DataEducational Data Mining10.1007/978-3-319-02738-8_2(29-64)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2013

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