Hi Jack! Thank you for your question. We received an overall positive response from teachers and students regarding the videos. However, due to COVID we do not currently have enough data to quantitatively measure learning gains for this module. 

Hi Aditi, thank you for your question! In this particular example, we embedded some videos that were not previously in the tasks. With online learning at some schools in our area, meeting for every class was not feasible for every student. With that in mind, we wanted to still try to provide a full learning opportunity to students by putting videos that either introduced or reviewed mathematics or computer science concepts. 

I just watched your video and it would be great to connect! It looks like you have a bit more decoding, but we did put some decoding/debugging problems in our tasks, too!

Thanks for responding! That makes sense. I'm sure the teachers appreciated the extra support and tailored materials. Yes, would be great to connect - I'm at awagh@mit.edu. 

Hi, Allan! That's a really great question. I would say that the videos are probably not a lot of added scaffolding but more toward the latter. Some of the students in the schools in our area are not able to attend classes online every day, so we wanted the modules in a state where they could be used by a full class and/or a single student. Before the pandemic, we didn't have any videos in the modules as we wanted to leave some freedom for teachers to add some of their own ideas while implementing them!

Hi Sierra!! It's so good to hear from you. So, this video is actually highlighting changes we made because of the pandemic. The original design of the modules was done with face-to-face instruction in mind. I could see how some teachers might use ideas from these videos when they are back face-to-face again, though!

Oh my gosh a total misunderstanding on my part, that's great and makes more sense in my mind now! The pandemic has brought on a whole new set of problems for our teachers and from your responses to other comments it seems like these videos are very helpful to both teachers and students!

Thank you Karen for all of your questions.  This year we collected interview data and video recordings of online classes from some of our teachers.  We are still in the process of analyzing this data, but we hope to have something to report soon.  For your second set of questions, I know several teachers mentioned that they thought the videos would be useful during class as a way for students to have information on demand. For example, we added some videos about programming commands in Scratch to the modules.  Some of the teachers thought that this would allow students to look up a recap of the lesson presented in class as opposed to wait for the teacher to visit their group. 

I cannot speak for other members of our research group, but the positive response from teachers encourages me to continue making videos for other projects when possible. I think the real challenge is making videos that are active learning experiences (which we tried to do by incorporating several pauses in the video for students to work on their own).   

Thanks, Matthew for sharing more information about you research and possibilities for the future.  I bet that online work will have a bigger role in the future, in conjunction with in school activities.  Having high quality videos that support the work of both teachers and students will be needed--and this project has much to offer.  Best wishes for data analysis and publishing your results!

Hi, Eric! Thank you for your questions. To answer your first question, we did not try to convince teachers that implementing our modules would be 'better' than their usual instruction. The value teachers saw in our modules was in the computer science. They saw that students could learn math just as well with this implementation while also learning how to code. There are pros and cons to implementing our modules, like with any integrative and new curricula. From teacher interview data analysis, we found that a majority of teachers felt that the pros of this module implementation outweighed the cons and that this integrative approach is valuable. 

For your second question, are you asking if we think we would see a decline in coding and computational skills if there is not a continuation of this work in high school? Possibly. However, the exposure to coding early in school can plant a seed for students to grow on. With our project, the intent was to plant this seed for more  underserved students in computer science by implementing these modules in under-resourced schools. While it is true that these students might not be able to continue learning in this way through high school, we hope that the early exposure has motivated them to continue developing their skills on their own using free online resources or to continue learning after high school. 

Ashley,

Thanks for your reply.  For the first question, I am happy that you found a group of teachers willing to embrace this innovation without having to sell them on the idea.  The elephant in the room, e.g. high-stakes testing, can in many cases serve as a barrier to innovation, rather than spurring it along.  For the second question, I am not so worried about the loss of coding skills in high school, but rather the lack of perceived support or connection to mathematics by students when, having gained strong coding and computational skills in middle school, find them separated once again by the time they get to more advanced mathematics classes in high school.