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
   

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2. Background
   

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5. Zone of Proximal Development
   - Lev Vygotsky., 1978
   

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6. PRIMM
   - Sentance et al., 2019
   Not Mine
   Partly Mine
   All Mine
   

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7. Skill Transfer
   Types of
   Transfer
   Negative
   Transfer
   Positive
   Transfer
   Low/High
   Transfer
   Simple/Complex
   Transfer
   

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8. Expertise Reversal
   

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9. Context
   

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10. Content Design
    Upskilling
    Content Packaging
    ICT Staff Shortage
    Volunteers
    

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11. Solution
    

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13. • Different ways to look at code
    • Maximal use of
    volunteer contributions
    • Expertise Reversal & Skill Transfer
    

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22. • Open Education Resources
    • Provide immediate feedback
    • Game-based learning
    

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24. Three Types of Cards
    Goal Cards Environment Cards Code Cards
    

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25. One-to-Four Players
    

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26. The Playing Field
    

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27. Playing a Card
    

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28. Updating the Trace Table
    

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29. Earning Points
    

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32. Sixteen Heroes
    • Shield
    • Sword
    • Helmet
    • Cape
    • Gender
    • Skin tone
    

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33. The Scroll
    

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35. State Table
    

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36. State Table
    

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38. • On the go learning
    • Accessible under time constraints
    • PRIMM principles
    

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45. • Reduce administrative overhead
    • Lower barrier to host classes
    • Recommend content in the
    Zone of Proximal Development
    based on knowledge graphs and
    student modelling
    

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51. Content Design
    Content Packaging
    Volunteers
    Conclusion
    

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