A First Approach to Co-Design a Multimodal Pedagogic Conversational Agent with Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Programming in Primary Education
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Related Work
2.1. Pedagogic Conversational Agents
2.2. Teaching Programming in Primary Education
2.3. Training of Pre-Service Teachers
- First-order barriers: they are related to external causes such as lack of devices, Internet connectivity, or software. Teachers may wonder whether they have enough computers, tablets, if the Internet connection is stable, and if the software is going to work without failures.
- Second-order barriers: they are related to internal fears such as lack of knowledge, digital competence, organizational, or pedagogical concerns. Teachers may wonder how they can have enough confidence to try something new, how the software works, where or when they should use technology, and how to ensure that students obtain adequate computer time without missing other important content and attending to their curricular demands.
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Research Questions
- RQ1.
- Would pre-service teachers use PCAs to teach programming in their primary education classrooms if they were personally involved in creating such technology?
- RQ2.
- How would pre-service teachers like the PCA to teach programming in primary education?
3.2. Sample
3.3. Materials and Procedure
4. Results
4.1. Initial Questionnaire
4.2. Prototype
4.3. Validation Questionnaire
- “I think that this approach to teach programming is appropriate and can help children integrate technology in class and make them more enjoyable and didactic”.
- “I think it’s a great way to teach children, as it’s fun and entertaining at the same time”.
- “I find it very useful to make lessons more interactive and motivate children”.
5. Discussion
- It is necessary to provide a guide to help teachers in case they have doubts about PCAs and the activities they utilize for teaching programming.
- The associated applications to PCAs should allow teachers to manage several teams (each team should have 2–4 students). The profile per student should at least include his/her name, age, class, and progress. Progress should register, at least, the number of activities performed correctly vs. incorrectly and the time needed to complete them.
- When creating an activity for a PCA for teaching programming, it should include examples of possible programming activities. A template provided to the teacher should ensure that s/he knows which information should be provided, how the activity is being presented to the students, which information is provided by the student, and which information is provided by the PCA—as shown in Figure 16 and Figure 17 of the proposed PCA.
- When creating an activity using the PCA for teaching programming, it should include tutorials to solve doubts about how to complete all tasks. For instance, if the teacher does not understand which information should be provided, help should be provided to explain each term and what is expected in each form.
- When creating an activity using the PCA for teaching programming, it should include a preview of how to solve the selected activity. In the case that students do not understand how to solve an activity, they could be assisted by a preview of how they are expected to complete it, so that they are prepared to tackle it later by themselves.
- There should be a setup menu to modify the difficulty level, language, and shape of both the digital (the one in the tablet or digital whiteboard) and physical PCA (the one used by students).
- The PCA’s language should be adapted to the age of the students with short, simple, fun, nice, friendly, motivating, and respectful sentences, so that they can easily understand it and are motivated to interact with it.
- It is also advisable to use metaphors to teach programming concepts, aimed to facilitate children’s understanding.
- If a team fails to solve a programming activity, the PCA could provide hints, suggestions, and partial solutions to help in successfully completing the activity.
- Multimodality can help children to understand various tasks. Thus, images should always be accompanied by text to provide the same information in different channels. Audio could be helpful if children could have/use earphones to avoid disturbing the rest of the teams working in the same classroom at the same time.
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Screen | Figure(s) | Value |
---|---|---|
Main menu | 13 | 3.4 |
Groups | 12 | 3.7 |
Activity creation | 13 | 3.6 |
Students’ activities | 15 | 4.2 |
Attending to diversity | 11–15 | 4.2 |
Use of language | 11–15 | 3.7 |
Intuitiveness | 11–15 | 3.8 |
Friendliness | 11–15 | 3.7 |
Ease of use | 11–15 | 3.6 |
Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q5 | Q6 | Q7 | Q8 | Q9 | Q10 | Q11 | Q12 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
n | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 | 35 |
1 | 3.71 | 3.49 | 3.74 | 3.80 | 3.94 | 3.91 | 3.66 | 4.23 | 3.89 | 3.80 | 4.23 | 3.63 |
2 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 |
3 | 0.789 | 0.742 | 0.780 | 0.797 | 0.906 | 0.919 | 0.802 | 0.808 | 0.718 | 1.023 | 0.877 | 0.910 |
4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q5 | Q6 | Q7 | Q8 | Q9 | Q10 | Q11 | Q12 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1.000 | 0.125 | 0.000 | 0.114 | 0.173 | 0.283 | 0.312 | 0.032 | 0.337 | 0.085 | 0.330 | 0.468 ** |
0.125 | 1.000 | 0.414 ** | 0.291 | 0.413 ** | 0.443 ** | 0.595 ** | 0.486 ** | 0.316 | 0.371 | 0.272 | 0.165 |
0.000 | 0.414 ** | 1.000 | 0.327 | 0.496 ** | 0.261 | 0.384 | 0.283 | 0.449 ** | 0.250 | −0.052 | 0.078 |
0.114 | 0.291 | 0.327 | 1.000 | 0.458 ** | 0.385 | 0.294 | 0.435 ** | 0.298 | 0.226 | 0.179 | 0.243 |
0.173 | 0.413 ** | 0.496 ** | 0.458 ** | 1.000 | 0.686 ** | 0.501 ** | 0.544 ** | 0.400 ** | 0.019 | 0.175 | 0.215 |
0.283 | 0.443 ** | 0.261 | 0.385 | 0.686 ** | 1.000 | 0.682 ** | 0.506 ** | 0.532 ** | 0.021 | 0.316 | 0.394 ** |
0.312 | 0.595 ** | 0.384 | 0.294 | 0.501 ** | 0.682 ** | 1.000 | 0.474 ** | 0.630 ** | 0.189 | 0.278 | 0.308 |
0.032 | 0.486 ** | 0.283 | 0.435 ** | 0.544 ** | 0.506 ** | 0.474 ** | 1.000 | 0.364 | 0.319 | 0.207 | 0.052 |
0.337 | 0.316 | 0.449 ** | 0.298 | 0.400 ** | 0.532 ** | 0.630 ** | 0.364 | 1.000 | 0.161 | 0.184 | 0.306 |
0.085 | 0.371 | 0.250 | 0.226 | 0.019 | 0.021 | 0.189 | 0.319 | 0.161 | 1.000 | 0.469 ** | 0.097 |
0.330 | 0.272 | −0.052 | 0.179 | 0.175 | 0.316 | 0.278 | 0.207 | 0.184 | 0.469 ** | 1.000 | 0.275 |
0.468 ** | 0.165 | 0.078 | 0.243 | 0.215 | 0.394 ** | 0.308 | 0.052 | 0.306 | 0.097 | 0.275 | 1.000 |
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Pérez-Marín, D.; Hijón-Neira, R.; Pizarro, C. A First Approach to Co-Design a Multimodal Pedagogic Conversational Agent with Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Programming in Primary Education. Computers 2024, 13, 65. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13030065
Pérez-Marín D, Hijón-Neira R, Pizarro C. A First Approach to Co-Design a Multimodal Pedagogic Conversational Agent with Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Programming in Primary Education. Computers. 2024; 13(3):65. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13030065
Chicago/Turabian StylePérez-Marín, Diana, Raquel Hijón-Neira, and Celeste Pizarro. 2024. "A First Approach to Co-Design a Multimodal Pedagogic Conversational Agent with Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Programming in Primary Education" Computers 13, no. 3: 65. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13030065
APA StylePérez-Marín, D., Hijón-Neira, R., & Pizarro, C. (2024). A First Approach to Co-Design a Multimodal Pedagogic Conversational Agent with Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Programming in Primary Education. Computers, 13(3), 65. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers13030065