Artifact : Independent Study
Independent Study Standards AECT : 5.1, 5.2 & 5.3
Coding examples and assignment
Proposal Submission Form for CCAC 2014 Summer Faculty Institute_Hopscotch
Description: During the spring semester of 2014, I began to test the hypothesis that problem-solving skills by coding improve computational thinking in pre-service teachers (PST) as they learn to teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics to their students. The independent study was conducted under instructor Dr. David D. Carbonara for one of the elective courses, GDIT 509: Independent Study.
Goal: The goal of this independent study was to explore computational thinking for my dissertation.
Expectation: The final deliverable for independent study was to expand the literature review on computational thinking and problem-based learning and to design, develop and assess the teaching of a coding technique for undergraduate freshmen students and to advance my thoughts on my dissertation topic.
Reflection: Before beginning Independence study, I already started teaching educational programming language, but I hadn’t researched about it. It was a great opportunity for me to began reading journal articles and conference papers. After completing the Independence study, I now explored my research interested more. I finished the project during the spring semester. Dr. Carbonara and I met every week to talk about computational thinking strategies, teaching, and research. I taught the educational programming language Hopscotch for seven sessions to the students in Instructional Technology and Leadership for about 150 freshmen students from various backgrounds, such as teaching math, social science, kindergarten, preschool teachers, etc. I consulted with Dr. Carbonara to design the lessons to teach the Hopscotch app to the students while he was in the room. I assigned three projects for the students to complete and graded the projects based on the rubric that Dr. Carbonara and I constructed. Also, he and I created a PowerPoint presentation to help students after class to remember what we taught in class for their projects. Dr. Carbonara also created a reflection section on Blackboard for students to explain what they learnt while doing their projects.I will support and encourage my prospective students to take independence study to stick them to their interested research to enhance their learning and improve performance.