| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 6, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | April 5, 2016 |
| Award Number: | 1321045 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
brian smith
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 15, 2013 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2017 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $549,763.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $576,763.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2015 = $13,000.00 FY 2016 = $14,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
240 FRENCH ADMINISTRATION BLDG PULLMAN WA US 99164-0001 (509)335-9661 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
School of EECS Pullman WA US 99164-2752 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Special Projects - CNS, TUES-Type 2 Project, Cyberlearn & Future Learn Tech |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 04001314DB NSF Education & Human Resource |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Washington State University will design and study the educational affordances of a social programming environment (SPE), a technology-rich learning environment centered around a social networking-style activity stream of learners' problem-solving activities and progress. Through an iterative, participatory design process involving students and instructors at Washington State University, Pacific University, and Mesa Community College, this project will develop (a) an SPE to support learners as they work outside-of-class on the kinds of individual programming assignments that are the centerpiece of early computing courses; and (b) sets of practical guidelines and best practices to help instructors implement social programming assignments in their courses. This work will contribute new, theoretically-grounded accounts of how learning and participation proceed in social problem-solving environments, as well as empirical findings related to their impact on student learning outcomes, problem-solving processes, attitudes, and retention.
Building upon previous work adapting the studio-based learning model for computing education, the project staff aim to address low retention in computing degree programs by facilitating effective online learning communities for introductory computing courses. This project will result in two new open source technologies?a ?social plug-in? for a computer programming environment, and a learning management system tailored for ?social programming??that can be readily used in both K-12 and undergraduate computing education. While this project focuses on computing education, the novel social problem-solving technologies and the empirical findings of the research studies will be applicable to many STEM disciplines in which learners benefit by working individually on problems within a social environment.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project has explored the educational value of promoting greater social interaction and awareness among learners by embedding a social networking-style activity stream within a STEM problem-solving environment. Focusing on undergraduate computing education, the project designed a social plug-in that integrated an activity stream into a computer programming environment, and empirically investigated the educational impact the integrated activity stream had on students’ learning processes, attitudes, and outcomes. Key products and outcomes of this project include:
- A model for designing social networking-style activity stream that can be integrated into a STEM problem-solving environment to promote greater social interaction and awareness.
- Empirical evidence that students who use such an integrated activity stream are twice as socially active as students who use an activity stream not integrated into a problem-solving environment.
- Empirical evidence that students’ active participation in an activity stream positively correlates with their performance in computer programming assignments and exams.
- A detailed empirical account of the specific ways in which students’ interactions in the activity stream contribute to positive progress in computer programming tasks.
- A predictive model of student achievement that combines students’ programming and social behaviors to attain greater predictive power than can be obtained from considering programming behaviors alone.
- A model for designing scaffolding into a STEM problem-solving environment that nudges students to participate, in ways positively correlated with learning outcomes, in a social networking-style activity stream embedded into the problem-solving environment.
Last Modified: 12/15/2017
Modified by: Christopher Hundhausen
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