Analysis of STEM Activities in Primary Students’ Science Projects in an Informal Learning Environment

This study adopted a researcher-generated framework to analyze STEM activities demonstrated in primary students’ science projects in an annual extracurricular event held in Hong Kong. Ten students’ project reports were randomly selected from each of the three groups of 24 outstanding, 45 merit, and 68 consolation awarded projects. Content analysis was conducted to code the activities in each project. The coded information was then changed into numerical data for quantitative analysis. The results showed that, in general, more engineering and science activities than technology and mathematics activities were adopted by the primary students in their projects. More projects with the Outstanding Award conducted STEM activities than those projects with Merit and Consolation Awards, and significant group differences existed in the science and mathematics activities. Besides, science activities significantly positively related to engineering and mathematics activities. Furthermore, STEM-related content knowledge of discipline core ideas and crosscutting concepts were reported. This study sheds light on the pattern of STEM activities in students’ science projects, and has implications for promoting STEM integration in primary education.     

Format-free databases and the construction of knowledge in primary school science projects

Most current science education reform documents are placing much emphasis on having students become competent in identifying, accessing and operating upon relevant information sources and in using the information to construct new knowledge. One of the means they suggest for achieving these aims is science project work. However, a review of the research literature indicates that little knowledge construction occurs during science projects. This article reports on a study in which a teacher used the collaborative development of a format-free computer database to facilitate the construction of knowledge by a group of three Year 6 students during a science project.     

AN EVALUATION OF A COMPUTER SCIENCE ORIENTATION PROGRAMME

A short and intensive orientation programme was offered to a small group of students before the start of their first computer science course. During the orientation programme, students studied Karel, a simple programming language which provides pre‐programming skills for students embarking on a Pascal programming course. The programme was evaluated in terms of the assistance it gave participants in coping with the computing course. This evaluation placed emphasis on both the content of the programme and the social orientation aspects.     

Scaffolding students' knowledge integration: prompts for reflection in KIE

Encouraging students to be autonomous is an important goal of the scaffolded knowledge integration framework. Knowledge integration requires students to expand their repertoire of ideas but unless those ideas are reflected upon, they cannot be linked to and reconciled with current ideas. Students are capable of doing this kind of reflection but, many need scaffolding. Scaffolding here in the form of reflection prompts can help students be autonomous integrators of their knowledge. This research investigated learning and design questions. It determined whether reflection prompts promote knowledge integration for students working on science projects and investigated the effects of students' different dispositions on their reflection. It explored which characteristics of prompts best support students in knowledge integration. The learning results indicate that prompting students to reflect significantly increases knowledge integration in science projects. Yet similar prompts elicit qualitatively diverse responses from students. Students who focus on their ideas perform significantly better on the end product than do other students who focus on their actions or activities. Furthermore, students who indicate that they understand everything perform significantly worse on the final project than do other students. The design results show that self-monitoring prompts, which encourage planning for and reflection on activities, help students to demonstrate an integrated understanding of the relevant science; while activity prompts, which guide the inquiry process, are less successful in prompting knowledge integration.     

任务驱动+过程反馈的Java教学方法研究

Java程序设计课程是计算机专业的重要课程,不仅要学习Java的相关编程知识,更承担了让学生从面向过程到面向对象编程思想转变的任务。既要有理论知识的讲解,又要有Jdk内容的学习,一直是学生学习的难点课程。文章通过对教学过程中学生频繁出现问题的分析,设计了一套针对Java教学的方案,提出了任务驱动和过程反馈相结合的教学方式,针对不同的阶段设计相应的实例,并针对学生的反馈进行及时的修正,使学生更好地理解面向对象的基本概念和Java程序设计方法。     

基于Internet的液位控制实验系统

介绍了基于Internet的液位控制实验系统,该实验系统是浙江大学电工电子网络实验室系统的一个子系统,它综合利用了互联网、自动控制、计算机实时控制、面向对象编程和数据库等技术,使学生可以通过远程登陆进行实验,并通过Internet返回实验结果。     

From Object-oriented Design to Visual Programming

Object-oriented languages are now becoming widely accepted in the computer science community and are beginning to spread into industrial environments. New methodologies are emerging and powerful languages and environments are now available. However, these new techniques and environments are accessible only to experienced programmers, and lack interactive user-friendly interfaces. The democratization of object-oriented environments is made possible by reducing the level of knowledge required for programming, and raising the capabilities of computer-aided design systems. We show by means of a set of examples that Smalltalk lacks only a few graphical tools to make it accessible quickly and easily by novices and to transform it into a visual programming environment. This set of tools were experienced in industrial contexts, and proved successful both as design aids to engineers and as teaching supports to students.     

Computer Technology in an Authentic Science Project

Summary

While a constructivist approach to the integration of technology in the science curriculum can enable teachers to educate students on the cyclical nature of the research process and interrelate various scientific concepts, there are several considerations for educators must take to assure that it is done effectively. The authors provide a review of a project that was designed and implemented for high school science students that integrated the use of technology in a constructivist environment. This review summarizes the strengths and limitations of the project and provides educators with further considerations when implementing such a project. As educators become more familiar with what is required to successfully integrate technology in a constructivist environment, the limitations and obstacles that may be encountered can be limited. More research devoted to the use of computer technology to teach science process skills will bring teachers and students closer to harnessing the potential powers of both project-based learning strategies and the computer environment.     

基于迷宫项目的C语言编程能力分析与高职教学实践

文章以C语言为载体,从编程能力培养的角度分析了编程教学应该考虑的几个主要问题。提出用能引起学生兴趣的项目做牵引目标,指引学生在完成项目开发的过程中,学习C语言知识点,培养计算机编程能力,说明在选择项目时,既要考虑覆盖C语言知识点,又要体现C语言的编程能力培养。结合目前网络授课的现状,把精选出的项目实际应用于高职C语言编程网络课程的教学实践中,提出项目牵引的高职C语言网络课程教学模式,并在高职C语言网络授课中进行了实践,从教学效果看,这种基于项目的高职C语言编程网络课程教学模式,受到了师生的好评,为高职编程类网络课程的教学改革提供了实践和探索依据.     

Teaching Object‐Oriented Design Without Programming: A Progress Report

This project is demonstrating the feasibility of using the object‐oriented paradigm to teach students software design in a nonprogramming context. The program, developed using principles of user‐based, prototyping design, teaches students to create responsibility‐driven designs of computer games. Investigations with high school students with little or no knowledge of computers and senior computer science majors have demonstrated that students can indeed learn to use Class‐Responsibility‐Collaborator (CRC) cards to produce creditable high‐level designs in a relatively short time whether or not they have programming experience and can generalize what they have learned to a new design. Although the computer science majors created more complete designs and demonstrated a deeper understanding of the design process than the high school students, these students still found the experience valuable. Both sample groups generally found the process interesting and relatively painless.     

A problem posing-based practicing strategy for facilitating students’ computer programming skills in the team-based learning mode

Computer programming is a subject that requires problem-solving strategies and involves a great number of programming logic activities which pose challenges for learners. Therefore, providing learning support and guidance is important. Collaborative learning is widely believed to be an effective teaching approach; it can enhance learners’ social interaction and offer a learning environment which provides rich learning experiences. However, the social interaction in collaborative learning does not occur automatically. Without proper guidance strategies or supporting tools for collaborative learning, the learning effects can be disappointing. To solve such a problem, a problem posing-based practicing strategy was proposed to support the development of a collaborative learning activity in a computer programming practice course. The students were guided to raise computer programming problems to boost the discussion among team members. The problems raised in each team were then exchanged and solved by another team to examine the coding and to provide feedback. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted in a C# programming course. Two classes of students from a university participated in the experiment. One class with 25 students was randomly assigned as the experimental group, and learned with a collaborative learning activity using the problem posing-based practicing strategy; the other class with 28 students was the control group, which learned with a conventional collaborative learning activity. The results show that the proposed strategy benefited the students in terms of improving their learning achievement, in particular, their programming skills. Moreover, it was found that the students who learned with the proposed approach had higher self-efficacy and lower cognitive load than those who learned with the conventional collaborative learning approach.     

Programming video games and simulations in science education: exploring computational thinking through code analysis

Various aspects of computational thinking (CT) could be supported by educational contexts such as simulations and video-games construction. In this field study, potential differences in student motivation and learning were empirically examined through students’ code. For this purpose, we performed a teaching intervention that took place over five weeks, with two-hour sessions per week, plus two more weeks for the pretest and post-test projects. Students were taught programming concepts through a science project; one group represented the function of a basic electric circuit by creating a simulation, while the other group represented the same function by creating a video game in which a player should achieve a score in order to win. Video game construction resulted in projects with higher CT skills and more primitives, as measured through projects’ code analysis. Moreover, the video-game context seems to better motivate students for future engagement with computing activities.     

Learning sorting algorithms through visualization construction

Recent increased interest in computational thinking poses an important question to researchers: What are the best ways to teach fundamental computing concepts to students? Visualization is suggested as one way of supporting student learning. This mixed-method study aimed to (i) examine the effect of instruction in which students constructed visualizations on students’ programming achievement and students’ attitudes toward computer programming, and (ii) explore how this kind of instruction supports students’ learning according to their self-reported experiences in the course. The study was conducted with 58 pre-service teachers who were enrolled in their second programming class. They expect to teach information technology and computing-related courses at the primary and secondary levels. An embedded experimental model was utilized as a research design. Students in the experimental group were given instruction that required students to construct visualizations related to sorting, whereas students in the control group viewed pre-made visualizations. After the instructional intervention, eight students from each group were selected for semi-structured interviews. The results showed that the intervention based on visualization construction resulted in significantly better acquisition of sorting concepts. However, there was no significant difference between the groups with respect to students’ attitudes toward computer programming. Qualitative data analysis indicated that students in the experimental group constructed necessary abstractions through their engagement in visualization construction activities. The authors of this study argue that the students’ active engagement in the visualization construction activities explains only one side of students’ success. The other side can be explained through the instructional approach, constructionism in this case, used to design instruction. The conclusions and implications of this study can be used by researchers and instructors dealing with computational thinking.     

面向对象C++实践教学体系的构建

面向对象C++程序设计是计算机专业的重要课程之一,也是一门实践性非常强的学科,构建一套可操作性的实践教学体系非常必要.本文从实践教学内容、实践教学方式、实践教学环节和实践教学考核等方面进行分析与研究,构建了该课程相对独立和完整的实践教学体系.实践证明,该体系对培养学生的动手编程能力具有一定的理论价值和实践意义.     

函数编程技术在计算机数学教学中的应用探讨

计算机数学,又称离散数学,是计算机学科的重要专业基础课程。在实际教学中发现,计算机科学专业的学生对该课程感兴趣的不多,多数畏惧其概念多、理论强且抽象。利用一种函数式程序设计语言(Haskell)辅助学生进行计算机数学中相关概念理解及其实际编程实验,主要针对课程教学中代数系统(如群)知识点,通过群定义及其性质验证实验来介绍函数编程技术,可以帮助计算机专业学生更好地学习理解计算机数学课程,并能充分调动其学习积极性和主动性,还可培养学生接受新知识的能力。     

Teaching Visual Design Principles for Computer Science Students

Computing has become highly visual as interactive programs become increasingly prevalent. Computer science students need to be able to create effective visual displays as part of interface implementation. This paper describes a course covering graphic design topics relevant to computer science students. In this course, students learn the basic visual elements, the visual organizational principles and how to use them in the context of the digital page. The other topics of this paper are the presentation of course information to the computer science student, the implementation of the course information as praxis, course project construction, and a method for critiquing student projects. Curriculum Integration will also be discussed as a feature towards achieving a seamless and collaborative experience.     

以专业实验室为依托促进创新人才培养

针对当前高校本科生开展科技创新活动所面临的困难和问题进行了调研,通过建设创新实践环境和创新实践项目有效解决了本科学生创新场地不足和创新能力训练不足的问题,采取“立项一制作一参赛”三步走的方法指导学生开展创新实践活动,充分发挥了专业本科生实验室对创新型人才培养的促进作用,取得了良好的应用效果。     

利用DELPHI实现密立根实验的仿真

介绍采用面向对象的编程环境DELPHI实现密立根油滴实验的仿真的原理,并提供重要的程序片断。     

Project design factors that affect student perceptions of the success of a science research project

Throughout the United States, various summer science programs for precollege students are conducted with an aim toward increasing the involvement of young people in science. Most of these programs are perceived as successful by teachers and scientists because they involve students in hands-on science activities, improve their scientific skills and confidence, and allow them the opportunity to use science to answer questions and solve problems. The work described here involves a detailed assessment of a summer National Science Foundation (NSF) Young Scholars Program, which was carried out over 2 summers. Student participants were entering 9th and 10th grade. The data used for this assessment included journals kept by teaching assistants, questionnaires administered to the participants and parents, and interviews with the participants. Analysis revealed that students perceived program success differently from teachers and program organizers. Their perception of the success of a program is directly related to whether or not their individual research project met its goals, regardless of other project activities. Designing projects that have a high likelihood of success from this perspective can be complex, but this work identified six variables that must be incorporated appropriately into the design of a project to ensure its success: (1) extent of project structure and who structures the project, faculty or student; (2) project relevance; (3) project flexibility; (4) project background research; (5) tangible results; and (6) project introduction.