Analogies and Active Engagement: Introducing Computer Science

We describe a new introductory CS curriculum initiative that uses analogies and active engagement to develop students' conceptual understanding before applying the concepts to programming. We believe that traditional coding approaches to introducing computer science concepts rely on students to build their own conceptual understanding, rather than grounding their understanding of concepts in what they know from everyday experiences. Using constructivism as a foundation for this curriculum initiative, our approach builds a framework for student understanding anchored in the physical world using simple games and stories to stimulate mental engagement through embodied learning. For example, we teach the concept of abstraction and representation by presenting the game of Tic-Tac-Toe as an island divided into nine regions, but the middle one you cannot get to by boat, which is the way two teams arrive to the island. After playing the game once and realizing the game is really just Tic-Tac-Toe, the students understand the example is a representation with modified rules and game pieces. Then we talk about how the set of rules for a simple game like Tic-Tac-Toe is an algorithm with instructions for how to play the game, and we use playing the game to explain computation as the execution of an algorithm. Based on observations using analogies and active engagement in 6th grade classrooms, we provide many examples explaining how this curriculum initiative is an engaging, effective, and flexible approach for introducing CS concepts.