Supporting Open-Ended Programming Assignments

Self-directed, open-ended projects can enable students to pursue their own interests and lead to deep learning. However, it can be difficult to incorporate these kinds of projects into a traditional curriculum in which all students must master a set of basic skills. In this chapter, the authors describe the design and implementation of Storytelling Alice, a programming environment that presents computer programming as a means to the end of creating animated stories. By studying the kinds of animated movies that students envision creating, the chapter’s authors were able to design the system such that typical student projects naturally motivate the set of basic concepts we want students to learn. The authors present a potential model for incorporating Storytelling Alice into a classroom setting using open-ended projects. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some directions for future work that may help to enable the use more open-ended projects in formal education.

Modeling in the Classroom Using Squeak Etoys

Recently adopted 21st Century goals stress the importance of preparing students for a globally competitive society by providing them with opportunities to develop skills in global literacy, problem solving, innovation, and creativity. These goals create a challenge for teachers to move beyond traditional beliefs about teaching and learning in order to implement new technologies and teaching strategies in the classroom. This chapter provides a brief overview of the process of blending a new technology into the classroom setting. The process involves selecting the new technology, learning how to use it, and using it in the classroom. As a specific example, this chapter describes how a NSF-funded project, entitled Using Squeak to Infuse Information Technology (USeIT), is helping teachers learn how to use a new virtual modeling technology, Squeak Etoys, and use it in their classrooms. The teachers have learned and used Squeak Etoys in a way that works best for them and their students. They have created models and problem-based learning (PBL) lesson plans correlated with state curriculum standards.

A Simulation for Improving Teachers' Motivational Skills

A computer simulation for improving teaching is expected to remove the potential negative effects on real students while creating an environment that combines academic theories in an abstracted world of the classroom. simClass II is a teaching simulation which was designed to allow pre-service and in-service teachers to develop and exercise their motivational skills as they work within a Web-based, simulated classroom environment. This chapter aims to provide background knowledge and the basic logic for developing a simulation to help teachers enhance their skills in motivating students, with simClass II serving as a concrete example. In addition, three phases—knowledge acquisition, exercise, and debriefing— are proposed for cyclical practice of these skills.

Virtual Spaces for Teaching and Learning

Interaction is fundamental to the learning process and game-like 3D online spaces present opportunities for enhancing learning through supporting a richer variety of interaction between learners and content, instructor and peers. Provision of a “low threshold application” for development of learning experiences in such spaces will extend the opportunities for more teachers to arrange learning experiences in virtual spaces. A heuristic that maps the possible variety of learning experiences in virtual spaces is one option for supporting teachers in the design of such experiences.

The Narrative Event Diagram

Game-based learning and simulation is a powerful mode of learning, used by industries as diverse as aviation and health sciences. While there are many generic Virtual Learning Environments available to further education and higher education in the United Kingdom, there is no widely available open-source Web-based simulation environment for professional learning. The SIMPLE (SIMulated Professional Learning Environment) project has designed, created, implemented and is in the process of evaluating such an environment in a range of disciplinary settings. The simulations that are being created place both undergraduates and postgraduates in a professional context where their work is, as it will be in the workplace, distributed between tools, colleagues, resources, anticipated, and unanticipated problems. One of the key tools that staff will use to create simulations is the “narrative event diagram”, a design tool as well as a means by which the narrative of the simulation is constructed. This chapter will describe the tool, its design history and context, its current use, and next design iteration. In particular it will show the interdisciplinary genesis of the tool’s design, arising from the confluence of computer science, information science, and narrative theory, and its power in designing professional educational simulations.

Complex Systems Concepts in Simulations

This chapter discusses how a teaching simulation can embody core characteristics of a complex system. It employs examples of specific frameworks and strategies used in simSchool, a research and development project supported by two programs of the U. S. Department of Education: Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (2004-2006), and currently, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (2006-2009). The chapter assumes that a complex system simulation engine and representation is needed in teaching simulations because teaching and learning are complex phenomena. The chapter’s two goals are to introduce core ideas of complex systems and to illustrate with examples from simSchool, a simulation of teaching and learning.

simClass

This chapter presents the theory, structure, and development process used in designing a teaching simulation. simClass was designed to help teachers practice differentiated teaching based on students’ traits such as intelligence and personality. simClass has been shown to provide an effective environment for simulating many important steps of teaching. The development process for teaching simulation consists of three phases: learning and analyzing the phenomenon of teaching, designing elements for a teaching simulation and developing and implementing field trials of the simulation. This chapter shows how simClass followed the three phases of the development process for teaching simulation. At the end of the chapter, several implications for the research of teaching simulations were presented.

Designing Commercial Simulations for Teachers

Nearly half of all new teachers leave the field of education within the first five years (Ingersoll, 2003; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2005). Many of these teachers cite difficulties in classroom management as a contributing factor in why they left (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2005). To help prepare new teachers for the realities of the classroom, aha! Process, Inc. created a series of simulations, the aha! Process Classroom SIMs. These simulations provide a safe environment in which to practice Dr. Ruby K. Payne’s classroom management strategies from her book “Working With Students: Discipline Strategies for the Classroom” (2006). This chapter will discuss the design challenges the development team overcame to create these commercial simulations.

Exploring Teacher Problem Solving Using Simulation

Teacher education is currently facing pressures to demonstrate efficacy in preparing teachers who can affect P-12 student learning gains. Teacher work sampling is one pedagogical framework useful in helping candidates connect their teaching actions to the learning of students. The Cook School District simulation is a web-based environment in which teacher candidates can practice this “connecting teaching and learning” using the framework of teacher work sampling. Though expert-novice investigations were popular during the 1970s and 80s, recent methodological, conceptual, and technical developments have occurred and teacher education may benefit by revisiting these types of studies in an effort to gather empirical knowledge of teacher problem solving and the support of P-12 student learning. In this vein, teacher problem solving was explored using the Cook simulation and important differences between more and less experienced teachers were found on problem framing, problem analyzing, and solution development activities.

Using Case Studies as the Narrative to Game Design and Development

This chapter will provide concrete examples of how a research group at North Carolina State University is using case studies as the narrative/backstory for video game design and development. The chapter will begin with a background on video games for learning, followed by a description of case-based learning, and will conclude with five specific examples from games created through three different funded projects. The first example is a simulated case where a haptic feedback device was used to enhance student learning. The second case was derived from a video case on racial and ethical sensitivity. Cases on training and development for adult learners are explained in the next two descriptions. Finally, a case from a field trip was turned into a game for entomology students.