"I Have to Trust the Process": Learning Coding With Open-Ended Productive Failure Learning Activities

• In Event: Informal Education Using Online and Hybrid Tools

Abstract

Productive Failure research have largely focused on formal STEM contexts where students engaged in well-defined canonical problems, missing the opportunity to study the role of failure in open-ended problems. This work contributes to an emerging body of work focused on effective implementation of Productive Failure learning designs with diverse open-ended problems in informal learning environments. We featured an online synchronous workshop designed around productive failure learning activities (with open-ended problems) for high school students learning Scratch programming and debugging. We report on findings from an interaction analysis of salient moments of students’ debugging process, moments of trouble and repair, and their explanations of troubleshooting during the exploration and consolidation phase to understand students' learning of and engagement with computational concepts.

Authors

• Sagun Giri, Pennsylvania State University

• Gabriela T. Richard, Pennsylvania State University