NSF Org:	IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
Recipient:	UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
Initial Amendment Date:	July 26, 2021
Latest Amendment Date:	November 14, 2024
Award Number:	2119818
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Fengfeng Ke IIS  Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE  Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date:	October 1, 2021
End Date:	September 30, 2025 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$850,000.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$850,000.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2021 = $850,000.00
History of Investigator:	Kilchan Choi (Principal Investigator) kcchoi@ucla.edu Gregory Chung (Co-Principal Investigator) Gregory Chung (Former Principal Investigator) Kilchan Choi (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	University of California-Los Angeles 10889 WILSHIRE BLVD STE 700 LOS ANGELES CA  US  90024-4200 (310)794-0102
Sponsor Congressional District:	36
Primary Place of Performance:	University of California-Los Angeles 10889 Wilshire Boulevard LOS ANGELES CA  US  90095-1406
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	36
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	RN64EPNH8JC6
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s):	ECR-EDU Core Research
Primary Program Source:	04002122DB NSF Education & Human Resource
Program Reference Code(s):	8045
Program Element Code(s):	798000
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.070

ABSTRACT

This project aims to serve the national interest in STEM and computational thinking by developing and validating indicators of students' programming processes. The proposed exploratory research will develop a data logging module for Scratch to collect students' moment-to-moment programming behavior. The project team will develop data processing rules or algorithms to derive indicators of programming processes (e.g., debugging). The project will advance the understanding of what programming processes students use, how these processes unfold over time, and how these processes relate to measures of programming and computational thinking. The data logging module and algorithms will be distributed to the Scratch community to allow the study of programming processes at scale. The research will also produce a systematic and replicable methodology to accelerate the development of algorithms and widespread dissemination of the tools, techniques, and methods used to study programming processes.

The research will observe novice fifth grade and undergraduate students learning to program in Scratch. Students' process data will be used to derive indicators of programming processes. The indicators will be compared between age groups, within each age group over time, and to existing external measures of programming concepts and skills. This research will generate insights about what, how, and potentially why students perform the way they do. The capability to derive indicators of programming processes will complement existing methods of scoring static Scratch code. Algorithm development will focus on theoretically-driven, rule-based indicators of programming processes that are directly interpretable and on methods that systematize and accelerate the algorithm development process. The algorithm development methodology will apply to other block-based environments and applications involving process data such as games, simulations, and innovative item types in educational assessment.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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