Diana Pérez-Marín

Teaching programming to children at an early age has been proven to be beneficial. Some research has focused on how to teach programming to children with special needs. According to Human–Computer Interaction, all users should be involved in the design of their systems (including learning systems). However, evaluation procedures with young children are a complex task, which can be even harder when the young children have some special needs. This paper presents a preliminary usability study of a novel educational training system to teach ScratchJr. to young children. 48 neurotypical students between 6 and 7 years and 2 students with special needs in a pilot study were asked to use the system to find out whether they could complete an input/output activity and how it is related to their preferences.

Teaching programming to children at early age has been proven to be beneficial. Some research has focused on how to teach programming to children with special needs. According to Human-Computer Interaction, all users should be involved in the design of their systems (including learning systems). However, evaluation procedures with young children are a complex task, which can be even harder when the young children have some special needs. This paper proposes a validation procedure which was applied with 50 children between 6-7 years to evaluate the usability of a training system to teach them Scratch Jr irrespectively whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent.

Contribution: A methodology based on the learning by teaching approach facilitated by a mobile learning tool for creating tutorials. A study of the impact this methodology has had on the emotional well-being of students and its correlation with academic performance has also been carried out. Background: Insufficient resources and the absence of targeted teaching methods for technical content in vocational training may impact academic outcomes and lead to student demotivation. Previous studies indicate that employing active group methodologies contributes to the improvement of educational quality and positively influences the emotional well-being of students. Intended Outcomes: Improved academic performance, motivation levels, and collaborative work among peers, particularly within vocational training cycles. Application Design: A quasi-experimental design with a pre–post assessment of knowledge and emotional states. The study was carried out with 131 vocational training students, with one group following a conventional master class methodology that used practical activities, and another group following the learning by teaching methodology, where students created explanatory tutorials for their peers using a mobile application. Findings: Students who followed the proposed methodology significantly improved learning results compared to those who followed the traditional methodology. This improvement was evident both at the end of the experience and in the final evaluation of the course. Moreover, results revealed that the emotions of enjoyment and pride at the end of the learning process positively correlated with the acquisition of knowledge and that this correlation was more pronounced within the cohort that followed the learning by teaching methodology.

Pedagogic Conversational Agents (PCAs) are interactive systems that engage the student in a dialogue to teach some domain. They can have the roles of a teacher, student, or companion, and adopt several shapes. In our previous work, a significant increase of students’ performance when learning programming was found when using PCAs in the teacher role. However, it is not common to find PCAs used in classrooms. In this paper, it is explored whether pre-service teachers would accept PCAs to teach programming better if they were co-designed with them. Pre-service teachers are chosen because they are still in training, so they can be taught what PCAs are and how this technology could be helpful. Moreover, pre-service teachers can choose whether they integrate PCAs in the teaching activities that they carry out as part of their degree’s course. An experiment with 35 pre-service primary education teachers was carried out during the 2021/2022 academic year to co-design a robotic PCA to teach programming. The experience validates the idea that involving pre-service teachers in the design of a PCA facilitates their involvement to integrate this technology in their classrooms. In total, 97% of the pre-service teachers that stated in a survey that they believed robot PCA could help children to learn programming, and 80% answered that they would like to use them in their classrooms.

Desde la COVID-19, la integración de herramientas y competencias digitales en la enseñanza superior ya es una realidad en todos los países. El objetivo de este estudio es analizar la percepción del profesorado (n = 88) y del alumnado (n = 487) de los Grados en Educación Infantil y Primaria y Máster de formación del profesorado de una universidad pública de Madrid acerca de la evolución de su competencia digital, en general, y de las diferentes áreas competenciales, tanto antes como durante la enseñanza remota de emergencia. Para ello, nos apoyamos en el conocido Marco Común de Competencia Digital Docente del Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del Profesorado (INTEF). Desde una metodología cuantitativa y un cuestionario ad hoc validado por expertos se ha realizado un análisis descriptivo, correlacional e inferencial de las variables. Los resultados evidencian en los dos perfiles la disposición de recursos digitales suficientes para enfrentarse a esta modalidad, un aumento significativo de la autopercepción de esta competencia, destacando mayor desarrollo en las áreas: Comunicación y Colaboración, Creación de contenidos digitales y Seguridad. También muestran descontento hacia la modalidad virtual por la excesiva carga de trabajo y la formación continua requerida. El estudio ayuda a replantear los planes de estudio del futuro docente y los planes de formación del profesorado universitario sobre la necesaria competencia digital en la actualidad.

Pedagogic Conversational Agents (PCAs) are interactive systems that engage the student in a dialogue to teach some domain. They can have the role of teacher, student, or companion, and adopt several shapes. In our previous work, a significant increase of students’ performance when learning programming was found when using PCAs in the teacher role. However, it is not common to find PCAs used in the classrooms. In this paper, it is explored whether teachers would accept PCAs to teach programming better if co-designed with them. An experiment with 35 pre-service Primary Education teachers was carried out during the 2021/2022 academic year to co-design a robotic PCA to teach programming. The experience validates the idea that involving the teachers in the design of the PCA facilitates that they integrate this technology in their classrooms. 97% of the pre-service teachers answered in a survey that they believed that the robot PCA could help children to learn programming and 80% answered that they would like to use them in their classrooms.

There is a growing interest in finding new ways to address the difficult task of introducing programming to secondary students for the first time to improve students’ computational thinking (CT) skills. Therefore, extensive research is required in this field. Worldwide, new ways to address this difficult task have been developed: visual execution environments and approaches by text programming or visual programming are among the most popular. This paper addresses the complex task by using a visual execution environment (VEE) to introduce the first programming concepts that should be covered in any introductory programming course. These concepts include variables, input and output, conditionals, loops, arrays, functions, and files. This study explores two approaches to achieve this goal: visual programming (using Scratch) and text programming (using Java) to improve CT. Additionally, it proposes an AI recommendation model into the VEE to further improve the effectiveness of developing CT among secondary education students. This integrated model combines the capabilities of an AI learning system module and a personalized learning module to better address the task at hand. To pursue this task, an experiment has been carried out among 23 preservice secondary teachers’ students in two universities, one in Madrid, Spain, and the other in Galway, Ireland. The overall results showed a significant improvement in the Scratch group. However, when analyzing the results based on specific programming concepts, significance was observed only in the Scratch group, specifically for the Loop concept.

Background: Gamification is a promising field of research that can benefit education. In particular, it can benefit teaching programming to children. Emotional Learning Companions (ELCs) are interactive systems that dialogue with the students as well as provide them with emotional support. Intervention: The design of ELCs was extended with gamification to teach programming to Primary Education children. Riddles, levels, badges, and a leader board with trophies among other traditional gamification elements were incorporated into the learning companion, as well as game mechanics, aesthetics and connection with the players (students) to increase their learning, motivation and satisfaction levels. Methods: A pre-post test single group experimental research design was followed to test the proposal. In total, 137 students aged between 10 and 12 years used the gamified learning companion during an academic year in Ecuador. Results: The results showed a significant increase in students’ learning scores as well as satisfaction and motivation levels above 90%. Conclusion: Therefore, the conclusion is that gamifying ELCs to teach programming in Primary Education can improve students’ learning scores, satisfaction, and motivation levels.

Teaching programming is a topic that has generated a high level of interest among researchers in recent decades. In particular, multiple approaches to teaching visual programming have been explored, from the use of tools such as Scratch, robots, unplugged programming or activities for the development of computational thinking. Despite the wide range of resources used, students generally tend to perform poorly academically and perceive learning visual programming as a complex and demotivating task. In this article, the TutoApp system is proposed together with a new methodology based on “Learning by Teaching”, where students create tutorials in their mobile devices to explain programming concepts to their peers. The hypothesis of this paper is that the use of this tool improves learning outcomes and the level of student satisfaction. An experiment with a pre-post-test design has been carried out with 57 university students in an introductory programming course, 30 belonging to a control group (did not use TutoApp) and 27 belonging to the experimental group (used TutoApp). The findings indicate that the creation of tutorials with TutoApp significantly improved students' academic performance over those who did not use it, specifically in learning the loops and conditional control structures. However, it was observed that anxiety increased in all students while learning visual programming. The results of this study open the door to the validation of the use of systems and methodologies for creating tutorials for teaching visual programming to university students.

COVID-19 has impacted the teaching and learning processes, underlying academic and emotional difficulties. The objective of the study is to analyze whether during emergency remote teaching and learning there have been significant changes in the mood and the digital competence of 89 teachers and 488 students of the Degrees of Early Childhood and Primary Education, and the Master's Degree in teacher training at Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid), analyzed from their self-perception. Using a quantitative methodology and an ad hoc questionnaire, its internal and content validity has been measured by experts, analyzing aspects such as mood and stress before and during confinement, registering a significant increase in the average values. In both profiles, the sources of stress, anxiety, and workload have increased significantly, at the same time that some cognitive abilities have diminished. The attitude and motivation towards the online moda-lity have decreased in both cases, especially in students, although the digital competence of both has increased. The study's main conclusion is the importance of knowing the impact of academic and non-academic factors in the online teaching and learning process. Therefore, the study can be valuable to face the possible changes towards online modality in these times of uncertainty, considering the factors analyzed. In addition, it is necessary to offer the educational community pedagogical-digital training together with training in emotion management and positive coping strategies for responding to these changes.