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Young Kids’ Basic Computational Thinking: An Analysis on Educational Robotics Without Computer

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Innovative Technologies and Learning (ICITL 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 13117))

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Abstract

Educational robotics without computer was widely adopted for young kids ‘computational thinking training. This study aimed to investigate how different instructional strategies influenced young children’s basic computational thinking skills through two research case scenarios. A true-experimental posttest with control group was used to fulfill the research purpose. Two experiments involved 3-h educational training. 36 first graders (6-year-old) from two public elementary schools in Taiwan voluntarily participated in the study. A mouse-shape robot kit (Code & Go Robot Mouse) and a car-shape robot kit (Botley Robot) were two instructional tools in the study. Two types of instructional strategies were developed: with or without visual aid. Three levels of computational thinking challenges (Easy, medium and hard) were designed. The findings from two case scenarios yielded that different types of instructional strategies only produce different learning outcomes for a hard learning task. It was suggested that students needed visual aids to support their learning process when solving more complex computational thinking problems.

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Correspondence to Pao-Nan Chou .

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Chou, PN., Shih, RC. (2021). Young Kids’ Basic Computational Thinking: An Analysis on Educational Robotics Without Computer. In: Huang, YM., Lai, CF., Rocha, T. (eds) Innovative Technologies and Learning. ICITL 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13117. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91540-7_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91540-7_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91539-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91540-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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