Future Learning Spaces for Computational Action and Empowerment

• In Event: Structured Poster Session: Understanding Future Learning Spaces Across Multiple Architectures

Abstract

Objective
If we are serious about supporting the next generation to be active creators, rather than passive consumers, of their digital futures, we need to consider how we help them develop the necessary skills and perspectives. As networked computers become increasingly ubiquitous in our everyday objects (commonly referred to as the Internet of Things – IoT), there is a corresponding opportunity for students to design and shape their identities and roles within these spaces. This study highlights how students’ development of mobile + IoT applications can change their relationships to their physical worlds and their personal identities as empowered computational actors.

Theoretical Perspective
Seymour Papert (1972; 1987) advocated, for students to be intellectually empowered through computers – that with the right technology, they should be capable of making their own decisions, posing their own questions, and developing their own answers. The introduction of mobile technologies has extended this empowerment beyond the walls of traditional computer labs and into students’ everyday lives and communities. Fundamental to this is the establishment of students’ computational identities (CI), their recognition of themselves as capable of thinking computationally and as members of the computational community more broadly; and their digital empowerment (DE), recognizing their personal ability to affect the world around them through computation (Tissenbaum et al., 2017). Friere (1993) states that students need to understand their relationship to the world (identity) in order to transform it (empowerment).

Methods
This mixed-methods research study is currently being conducted as part of summer camp that aims to support underrepresented high school students in developing math and science literacies. Twenty students are engaged in a 5-session curriculum in which they build projects that combine App Inventor (a blocks-based programming language) and IoT. The intended goal of the projects is to have a direct impact on students’ lives or their communities. Pre- and post-tests are being administered to understand changes in students’ perceptions of their own CI and DE and the role that IoT can play in their lives. Building from existing coding schemes for understanding complexity in blocks-based programming (Fields, Giang & Kafai, 2014) we will triangulate this with the pre- and post-tests to gain insight into any relationships between project complexity and student self-assessment.

Results
Analysis is forthcoming, but we anticipate developing understandings of the relationships between students’ self-perceptions as empowered computational creators and their ability to recognize and articulate IoT + mobile solutions. We also plan to report how a curriculum focused on student-developed App Inventor + IoT solutions changes students’ relationship to and extends (into their daily lives) their physical learning spaces.

Significance
The findings in this study aim to highlight the role that physical and mobile computing can play in supporting students to see themselves as capable of being empowered actors in an increasingly digital society. This work reveals the need to further explore the definition of a future learning space - as the physical and digital spaces that span learners’ classrooms and communities become increasingly intertwined.

Authors

• Mike Tissenbaum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Mark Sherman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Josh Sheldon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Hal Abelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology