Codeschool in a Box: A Low-Barrier Approach to Packaging Programming Curricula

Presentation given at CSEDU 2023, Prague, Czech Republic.

The tech industry is a fast-growing field, with many companies facing issues in finding skilled workers to fill their open vacancies. At the same time, many people have limited access to the quality education necessary to enter this job market. To address this issue, various small and often volunteer-run non-profit organisations have emerged to up-skill capable learners. However, these organisations face tight constraints and many challenges while trying to design and deliver high-quality education to their learners. In this position paper, we discuss some of these challenges and present a preliminary version of a curriculum packager addressing some of these issues. Our proposed solution, inspired by first-hand experience in these organisations as well as computing education research (CER), is based on a combination of micromaterials, study lenses and a companion mobile application. While our solution is designed for the specific context of small organisations providing vocational ICT training, it can also be applied to the broader domain of learning environments facing similar constraints.

Research paper: https://beatsigner.com/publications/codeschool-in-a-box-a-low-barrier-approach-to-packaging-programming-curricula.pdf

Transcript

1. Codeschool in a Box A Low-barrier Approach to Packaging Programming Curricula Yoshi Malaise, Evan Cole and Beat Signer Web & Information Systems Engineering Lab Department of Computer Science Vrije Universiteit Brussel
2. Background
5. Zone of Proximal Development - Lev Vygotsky., 1978
6. PRIMM - Sentance et al., 2019 Not Mine Partly Mine All Mine
7. Skill Transfer Types of Transfer Negative Transfer Positive Transfer Low/High Transfer Simple/Complex Transfer
8. Expertise Reversal
9. Context
10. Content Design Upskilling Content Packaging ICT Staff Shortage Volunteers
11. Solution
13. • Different ways to look at code • Maximal use of volunteer contributions • Expertise Reversal & Skill Transfer
22. • Open Education Resources • Provide immediate feedback • Game-based learning
24. Three Types of Cards Goal Cards Environment Cards Code Cards
25. One-to-Four Players
26. The Playing Field
27. Playing a Card
28. Updating the Trace Table
29. Earning Points
32. Sixteen Heroes • Shield • Sword • Helmet • Cape • Gender • Skin tone
33. The Scroll
35. State Table
36. State Table
38. • On the go learning • Accessible under time constraints • PRIMM principles
45. • Reduce administrative overhead • Lower barrier to host classes • Recommend content in the Zone of Proximal Development based on knowledge graphs and student modelling
51. Content Design Content Packaging Volunteers Conclusion