Browsing by Subject "ohjelmointi"

The importance of programming and robotics in society is growing continuously, so it is useful for us as technology users to understand its impact on our lives. For this reason, it is important that already in primary school a good foundation for the 21st century skills is created, which include critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, collaboration skills, accessing and analyzing information, self-learning, curiosity and the use of imagination. Programming and robotics became part of the national core curriculum for basic education in 2016. Ac-cording to previous studies, robotics in education increase e.g. self-directivity, initiative, thinking skills, innovativeness, and technology engagement. When working with a robot, a student is in the role of a participant in accordance with the constructivist learning theory. For a novice programmer, a visual programming language is particularly well suited because the student's attention is focused on programming logic and problem solving instead of syntax. In this study the performance of elementary school fifth and sixth graders is examined in Lego robot programming tasks that become gradually more difficult. In addition, we want to know how the students found a solution to the tasks. A total of 23 fifth and sixth graders participated in the study. The students were given six programming tasks, which they performed in pairs. The students used visual programming language and Lego Mindstorms robots. The tasks involved moving the robot, and in the most demanding tasks also sensors, loop, and conditional expression were needed. The data collection was done by saving students’ programs, with a questionnaire, and with video recordings. The analytical method used was qualitative content analysis. The study showed that the students learned well the skills needed to move the robot. Instead, the use of loop and conditional expression produced difficulties. The sixth graders outperformed the fifth graders, although they also had more experience in robotics. Students solved tasks most often in co-operation with their partner, which supports previous observations of the usefulness of pair programming. Instead, internet was not used to find a solution, and the students were not provided with ready-made internet sources. This inspired the idea of the necessity of the sources sought beforehand.

Programming will be a part of mathematics education in elementary schools in Autumn 2016. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of teaching and student related factors on learning to program. Previous research has focused on evaluating the effect of programming instruction to other abilities including problem solving and planning. There is no research summarizing factors that affect the ability to learn to program This study was done by reviewing existing research. Previous research was analyzed and central results were summarized. In order to improve the reliability of the results, the research focused on results that were achieved on multiple studies. Conflicting results were mentioned. Research material was searched using Google Scholar research search engine with search terms related to learning and teaching to program. Based on the results of this study, the programming achievement increases if teaching contains instruction, use of examples and student’s own discovery and practice. According to some studies, even minimal instruction resulted in good learning results, but according to other studies even a large amount of instruction was insufficient in gaining good results. The importance of practice and use of examples was mentioned in multiple studies. According to studies, learning was achieved by teaching with the help of programming environment. Graphical programming environments, in which programming is done with graphical tools, increases results. Graphical environment eliminates the need to focus on programming languages’ syntax. There was a link between programming achievement and student age. Student age combined with developmental stage limit the content that can be learned. Formal operation stage was seen as a requirement for advanced methods of programming. A link was found between mathematical ability and programming learning outcome and mathematical ability may be used to predict students’ ability to learn to program.