Touch, See and Talk: Tangibles for Engaging Learners into Graph Algorithmic Thinking

Algorithmic Thinking (AT) is at the core of Computational Thinking (CT). A number of initiatives target CT, few of them focus on AT and even less deal with Graph Algorithmic Thinking (GAT) with younger learners. This paper reports on tangibles’ design for GAT, appealing to different senses so as to...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 Vol. LNCS-12935; no. Part IV; pp. 630 - 651
Main Authors Bonani, Andrea, Bollin, Andreas, Gennari, Rosella
Format Book Chapter Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Cham Springer International Publishing 2021
SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Subjects
Algorithmic thinking
Children
Computational thinking
Computer Science
Multimodal
Tangible
Teens
Tangible
Computational thinking
Children
Multimodal
Algorithmic thinking
Teens
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Algorithmic Thinking (AT) is at the core of Computational Thinking (CT). A number of initiatives target CT, few of them focus on AT and even less deal with Graph Algorithmic Thinking (GAT) with younger learners. This paper reports on tangibles’ design for GAT, appealing to different senses so as to engage learners actively. It presents a field study with GAT tangibles and 14–15 years old high-school learners, divided into two groups: one group used tangibles, the other used traditional means, namely, paper and pencils. The study results show that tangibles were more engaging than in the traditional GAT setting, and differences among groups are statistically significant. The paper concludes by discussing the study results and advancing suggestions for future interventions related to engagingly teaching GAT.
ISBN:9783030856090
3030856097
ISSN:0302-9743
1611-3349
DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-85610-6_36