Sharing Good Practice
This article aims to provide empirical
evidence about how middle school
students were capable and enjoyed
text coding, specifically HTML/CSS
and some JavaScript coding, as well
as providing an example how to
integrate both hard and soft skills
[7]. This evidence is based on three
years of teaching at a well-established
American school in the Middle East. In
total, approximately 200 students took
the class. The student engagement
rate was more than 95% regardless
of gender. Student gender ratio was
close to one to one.
At least three positive learning
phenomena were observed. Firstly,
all students appeared to be very
comfortable in taking online courses
(CodeCademy in this case), although
there was a wide range of learning
speeds. The classroom formed an
ideal learning environment, quiet but
mentally stimulating. Students asked
for help whenever they had a problem,
and with a teacher at hand, students
enjoyed a personalized learning
experience. The teacher provided
short lessons whenever needed to
address common mistakes. Because
of the wide range of learning speed,
setting deadlines to accomplish
each stage of lessons was mainly for
students who had a slower pace or a
passive learning habit. Students with a
normal to speedy learning pace, were
encouraged to accomplish required
and advanced mini-projects/problems
so that they could apply learning to the
final project in depth (i.e., write codes
for their designed website). Secondly,
students were fascinated to learn
how to build a website from nothing.
They were amazed to see the change
when they played around with CSS
commands in designing the layout,
color pattern, text font, etc. They
were encouraged to ask questions
about features they liked in other
websites such as how to have music
played when the website is launched.
And then when they found out,
how they could have such features
incorporated into their projects.
During these “research” and “self-
learning” processes, the third positive
phenomenon became evident. The
students were happy to share and
exchange their findings. Students also
enjoyed presenting their websites and
talking about their respective learning
adventures. The 21st century soft skills
in communication & collaboration,
critical thinking & problem solving, are
naturally blended in. These positive
phenomena significantly contributed
to the high successful learning rate of
this course.
In terms of course content and
technical hard skills, HTML/CSS
languages are relatively easy to
understand compared to JavaScript
for most of grade 7 and 8 students. This
helped build up student’s confidence
in text coding and motivation
in engaging the course before
JavaScript was introduced. However,
students were weak in two aspects:
computer and network knowledge
and concept understanding through
on-line learning. Firstly, students did
not understand many basic Internet
and computer management skills.
For example, they did not know the
difference between Internet and their
own laptop environments. They are
used to the fact that Google saves
everything, and they lacked the habit
of saving their works while using other
software. They did not understand the
nature of file structure, type, size, and
storage location. They applied single
method to transfer file regardless the
file size, which affected the transferring
speed. They often looked for missing
pictures/photos when they ran their
code the second time because
they trashed the files after their first
successful execution of the code/
program and thought “somebody”
would remember that. Secondly,
students were able to pass the tasks/
quiz in CodeCademy for each learning
concept. However, that didn’t mean
they fully understood the concept. This
phenomenon was significant when
learning JavaScript, where common
computer programming concepts
like variables, loops, conditionals,
and computing were introduced.
Therefore, the teacher needed to
write up specially designed questions
or tasks to test their understanding.
A follow up lecture was needed to
help clarify students’ confusion or
misunderstanding.
Clearly, making the course relevant to
students is the key to make students
successful, while learning necessary
skills along the way. A case study,
example at Georgia Tech, has shown
the impact when the same course
was redesigned to become relevant
to students. Georgia Tech required all
students in Liberal Arts, Architecture,
and Business majors to take a CS
course [8]. They created a new course
called Media Computation by having
students to manipulate digital media
as a way to learn loops, conditionals,
and computing. Students not only
produced creative art works in their
Media Computation course, but also
passed this Media Computation
course in significantly higher numbers
(85%), improved from below 50% in
the former CS course. It is hoped that
similar levels will be observed at the
K-12 education.
In conclusion, inviting students to start
learning text coding is recommended
and students could start as early
as 7th grade. During the process,
students should not only learn text
coding, but also learn necessary
computer and networking knowledge
and management skills. In addition,
students should have chances to
practice 21st century soft skills such
as communication/collaboration and
critical
thinking/problem
solving.
Online learning is natural for this digital
generation. However, a student’s
understanding of the concepts may
not be accurately assessed by online
tasks/quizzes, so a teacher’s attention
is required. Finally, tasks and projects
need to be relevant to students to
promote their successful learning
and a high level of engagement. This
approach encourages students to
switch from being passive to active
learners, who take charge of their own
learning, collaboration, participation,
discovery, reasoning and creativity.
Hsing-Wen Wang received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Case Western
Reserve University. She has taught and conducted medical research at University of
Pennsylvania, National Yang-Ming University (Taipei), and University of Maryland
(2006-2015). Since 2015, she is an independent consultant/researcher and teaches
technology in American Community School of Abu Dhabi.
Class Time
Term 1 Sep - Dec 2019
39