Journal Article

Characterizing Students’ 4C Skills Development During Problem-based Digital Making

Cui, Zhihao, Ng, Oi-Lam, Weng, Xiaojing, Chiu, Thomas K. F., Jong, Morris S. Y.

2022

Overview

Amid the maker movement, educators are proposing various making activities with programmable artifacts to prepare students for coping with the challenges in the twenty-first century. Today, the “4C” skills—critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration—are regarded as significant learning outcomes in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education; however, few researchers have investigated the adoption of problem-based learning in K-12 programming education for developing students’ 4C skills. A case study was conducted in a “digital making” camp in which 54 upper elementary and lower secondary school students (10–14 years old) were engaged in harnessing a block-based programming tool, Scratch, to conduct various problem-solving tasks. Through triangulating multiple sources of qualitative data (including lesson plans, classroom field notes, videotaped lesson records, student solutions/artifacts, and post-intervention interviews), together with the microgenetic learning analysis, this study characterizes students’ 4C skills development in the process of problem-based digital making. We found that the problem-based digital making environment supported the students’ development of (a) critical thinking in the form of critical modeling and critical data handling; (b) creativity in the form of creative explorations, creative solutions, and creative expressions; and (c) communication and collaboration in the form of communicative scaffolding and collaborative debugging. Complementary evidence-based suggestions for scaffolding problem-based digital making activities are suggested.

• Publisher: Springer Nature,Springer Netherlands,Springer,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Analysis / Case studies / Collaboration / Communication Skills / Computer Science Education / Computer Software / Cooperation / Cooperative Learning / Creativity / Critical Thinking / Early Adolescents / Education / Educational Technology / Elementary School Students / Elementary Secondary Education / Experiential Learning / Instructional scaffolding / Learning / Lesson Plans / Mathematics Education / Middle School Students / Problem Based Learning / Problem Solving / Programming / Qualitative analysis / Scaffolding / Science Education / Secondary School Students / Secondary Schools / Skill development / Skills / Students / Teaching Methods / Thinking Skills