Andri Ioannidou

Scalable game design and the development of a checklist for getting computational thinking into public schools

Game design appears to be a promising approach to interest K-12 students in Computer Science. Unfortunately, balancing motivational and educational concerns is truly challenging. Over a number of years, we have explored how to achieve a functional balance by creating a curriculum that combines increasingly complex game designs, computational thinking patterns and authoring tools. Scalable Game Design is a research project exploring new strategies of how to scale up from after school and summer programs into required curriculum of public schools through game design approaches. The project includes inner city schools, remote rural areas and Native American communities. A requirement checklist of computational thinking tools regarding curriculum, teacher training, standards and authoring tools has been developed and is being tested with thousands of students.

What Makes End-User Development Tick? 13 Design Guidelines

End-user development has enormous potential to make computers more useful in a large variety of contexts by providing people without any formal programming training increased control over information processing tasks. This variety of contexts poses a challenge to end-user development system designers. No individual system can hope to address all of these challenges. The field of enduser development is likely to produce a plethora of systems fitting specific needs of computer end-users. The goal of this chapter is not to advocate a kind of universal end-user development system, but to cut across a variety of application domains based on our experience with the AgentSheets end-user simulation-authoring tool. We have pioneered a number of programming paradigms, experienced a slew of challenges originating in different user communities, and evolved end-user development mechanisms over several years. In this chapter we present design guidelines that cut across this vast design space by conceptualizing the process of end-user development as a learning experience. Fundamentally, we claim that every end-user development system should attempt to keep the learning challenges in proportion to the skills end-users have. By adopting this perspective, end-user development can actively scaffold a process during which end-users pick up new end-user development tools and gradually learn about new functionality. We structure these design guidelines in accordance to their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic nature of support offered to end-users.

Using components for rapid distributed software development

Software development has not reached the maturity of other engineering disciplines; it is still challenging to produce software that works reliably, is easy to use and maintain, and arrives within budget and on time. In addition, relatively small software systems for highly specific applications are in increasing demand. This need requires a significantly different approach to software development from that used by their large, monolithic, general-purpose software counterparts such as Microsoft Word. The paper discusses the use of components for rapid distributed software development. It reports on the the experience of a large testbed called Educational Software Components of Tomorrow (www.escot.org), supported by the US National Science Foundation.

Agent-based end-user development

The goal of agent-based end-user development (EUD) is to empower end users with agents they can instruct directly. This process of instruction is completely transparent to the user; that is, it is not based on opaque adaptation mechanisms. Conceptually, the idea of instructing agents includes what is often called end-user programming [3] that addresses some of the major objections users have toward agents, such as the lack of trust and the need to train them. However, it poses the huge challenge of creating development tools suitable for end users who possess no programming background or interest in learning how to program.

Broadening participation through scalable game design

Game development is quickly gaining popularity in introductory programming courses. Motivational and educational aspects of game development are hard to balance and often sacrifice principled educational goals. We are employing the notion of scalable game design as an approach to broaden participation by shifting the pedagogical focus from specific programming to more general design comprehension. Scalable game design combines the Flow psychological model, the FIT competency framework and the AgentSheets rapid game prototyping environment. The scalable aspect of our approach has allowed us to teach game design in a broad variety of contexts with students ranging from elementary school to CS graduate students, with projects ranging from simple Frogger-like to sophisticated Sims-like games, and with diverse cultures from the USA, Europe and Asia.

LEGOsheets: a rule-based programming, simulation and manipulation environment for the LEGO Programmable Brick

The LEGO Programmable Brick gives children the ability to create physical artifacts, such as vehicles and robots, and program them with interesting behaviors. However, programming is difficult to learn, even for adults. Children often lose interest in further exploration of programming through adult learning mechanisms. Environments that support a gradual transition from manual control of the physical artifact to complete programming substantially simplify the process of programming. The combination of LEGOsheets and the Programmable Brick is an educational environment that provides a gentle, enticing introduction to programming and the design of mechanical artifacts. This paper introduces LEGOsheets, a rule-based programming environment that allows children to simulate and manipulate the LEGO Programmable Brick.

Behaviour processors: layers between end-users and Java virtual machines

Visual programming approaches are limited in their usefulness if they do not include a profile of their users that defines exactly who is attempting to solve what kind of problems using which tools and why. Without such a definition, visual programming approaches can end up as solutions in search of problems. Reconceptualizing-programming environments as layered behaviour processors in the context of creating SimCity/sup TM/ like interactive simulations-makes end user programming more feasible. The layered approach serves the programming needs for a range of users, including casual computer end users and professional programmers. The extension of the Agentsheets system with the Ristretto/sup TM/ agent to Java bytecode compiler is used to illustrate how a behaviour processor enables end users to create their own Java applets that can be embedded into Web pages.

AgentCubes: Incremental 3D end-user development

3D game development can be an enticing way to attract K-12 students to computer science, but designing and programming 3D games is far from trivial. Students need to achieve a certain level of 3D fluency in modeling, animation, and programming to be able to create compelling 3D content. The combination of innovative end-user development tools and standards-based curriculum that promotes IT fluency by shifting the pedagogical focus from programming to design, can address motivational aspects without sacrificing principled educational goals. The AgentCubes 3D game-authoring environment raises the ceiling of end-user development without raising the threshold. Our formal user study shows that with Incremental 3D, the gradual approach to transition from 2D to 3D authoring, middle school students can build sophisticated 3D games including 3D models, animations, and programming.

Mr. Vetro: A Collective Simulation for Teaching Health Science.

Why has technology become prevalent in science education without fundamentally improving test scores or student attitudes? We claim that the core of the problem is how technology is being used. Technologies such as simulations are currently not used to their full potential. For instance, physiology simulations often follow textbooks by sequentially exposing individual systems such as the circulatory and respiratory systems one at a time, leaving out essential comprehension of system interactions. Moreover, the standard computer lab hides students behind large monitors and ignores the social aspect of learning. We have created a new kind of infrastructure, called Collective Simulations to provide engaging inquiry-based science learning modules that uniquely combine social learning pedagogies with distributed simulation technology. This infrastructure creates immersive learning experiences based on wirelessly connected computers and enables radically different classroom learning experiences that engage students and teachers simultaneously. Collective Simulations allow students to learn about the intricacies of interdependent complex systems by engaging in discourse with other students and teachers. As part of our Mr. Vetro Collective Simulation, students learn about physiology through technology-enhanced role-play. Each group controls physiological variables of a single organ on their computer. A central simulation gathers all the data and projects the composite view of a human. In an example activity, the heart and lung teams collaborate to adjust parameters and reach homeostasis. Results from formal evaluation studies demonstrate a positive impact on scientific inquiry, student learning, and students’ interest in personal health issues. This article describes Mr. Vetro and its underlying architecture and presents the evaluation results.

AgentCubes: Raising the Ceiling of End-User Development in Education through Incremental 3D

Now that we have end-user programming environments capable of empowering kids with no programming background to build games in a matter of hours, a new quest for raising the ceiling of end-user development is emerging. Environments not only focusing on programming, but also including rich media such as 3D, could work as compelling tools for introducing information technology at the K-12 level. The new challenge is raising the ceiling without raising the threshold. Based on our experience with AgentSheets, a tool used worldwide for computational science and game design applications, we created a new authoring tool called AgentCubes. This article discusses the notion of incremental 3D as a design approach for media-rich end-user development with low threshold and high ceiling in education