Instructional Embodiment and Video Game Programming in an After School Program PROCEEDINGS
Cameron L. Fadjo, Ming-Tsan Lu, John B. Black, Teachers College Columbia University, United States
EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology, in Honolulu, HI, USA ISBN 978-1-880094-73-0 Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Waynesville, NC
Elementary school students were taught how to use Scratch, a programming language, to design and develop their own personal video games. In our study 11 third- and fourth-graders either physically simulated (Direct Embodiment) or imagined (Imagined Embodiment) the actions described in a series of pre-defined computer programming statements. Initial findings show that those who engaged in Direct Embodiment during the instructional phase, while learning about both simple and complex programming statements, produced more complex conditional sequences than those who solely imagined the described actions. The findings also suggest that the use of Direct Embodiment as a pedagogical method encourages the implementation of abstract computational structures with greater frequency during coding and development sessions. Discussions of instructional embodiment concepts in its various forms are evaluated, limitations of the study are discussed, and future steps for instructional embodiment as a pedagogical method for computer programming and mathematics instruction are offered.
Fadjo, C.L., Lu, M.T. & Black, J.B. (2009). Instructional Embodiment and Video Game Programming in an After School Program. In G. Siemens & C. Fulford (Eds.), Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2009--World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (pp. 4041-4046). Honolulu, HI, USA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved January 19, 2018 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/32064/.
© 2009 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)