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DCS

Making Construals as a Vehicle for Interactive Collaborative Learning

The workshop will have three aspects:

  • An overview of making construals, highlighting relevant projects and publications and summarising empirical findings based on experience of interacting with several hundred computer science students, tens of school teachers and pupils, and several educational consultants.
  • Some practical experience of using the MCE for ICL, as illustrated by construals drawn from mathematics, computing (“unplugged”), medicine and music.
  • A final discussion in which participant feedback will be welcomed.

Note: A laptop will be essential if you wish to participate independently in some of the practical activities, but the workshop has been designed to serve as a useful practical introduction to making construals whether or not you have a laptop.

10.00-10.55 Session 1: Making Construals

Motivating making construals from an interactive collaborative learning perspective with reference to Seymour Papert and Charles Crook.

Making a construal as expressing how we think things work.

An introduction to the concept of making construals, based on online examples relating to Martin Gardner's Rolling Penny puzzle, a simple construal of the solar system and of the principles behind launching a spaceship to Mars.

Break

11.05-11.55 Session 2: Making Construals for Learning

Some walkthrough / hands-on practical exercises in making construals. [Laptops will be required for hands-on use.]

Making construals as a vehicle for learning, as evidenced by classroom experience and as illustrated by simple construals of activities such as shopping and giving change.

Making construals and pedagogical strategies associated with concretisation, contextualisation and gamification, as illustrated by a construal of number representations in different bases.

Break

12.05-13.00 Session 3: Making Construals for Collaborative Learning

Case studies from medicine and music which illustrate the merits of making construals in collaborative learning.

Hands-on demonstration of an environment for collaborative making of construals using mobile and desktop resources.

Making construals as objects-to-think with in the sense of Seymour Papert's Mindstorms, and as interactive artefacts that support the process of developing common understanding that is identified as crucial by Charles Crook in his seminal book Computers and the Collaborative Experience of Learning.

Closing discussion and participant feedback.

References

The practical resources associated with Session 1 can be found at this linkLink opens in a new window, as can the construals associated with giving change and with number representation in different bases referenced in Session 2.

The hands-on demonstration in Session 3 will be based on a newly developed environment for making construalsLink opens in a new window whose application to making a solar system construal is illustrated at the following webpageLink opens in a new window.

The other construals to be discussed in the workshop are a construal of shoppingLink opens in a new window, of piano-playing and of malaria.

Resources

Links to online resources to be introduced as appropriate in the course of the workshop:

  1. Background slidesLink opens in a new window
  2. Notes on Papert and CrookLink opens in a new window
  3. Using the environment for making construalsLink opens in a new window (the MCE)
  4. Martin Gardner's 'penny rolling' conundrum [WebLink opens in a new window / GeoGebraLink opens in a new window / MCELink opens in a new window]
  5. Illustrating basic concepts in making a construal [scenesLink opens in a new window]
  6. More about construalsLink opens in a new window
  7. The solar systemLink opens in a new window and the Mars launchLink opens in a new window construals.
  8. Introducing the MCE: the Getting Started with JS-EdenLink opens in a new window worksheet.
  9. A shopping construal and related resources [purseLink opens in a new window / makefromscratchLink opens in a new window].
  10. Computer support for computing unpluggedLink opens in a new window: a construal of giving changeLink opens in a new window
  11. Varieties of construalLink opens in a new window: three pedagogical strategies for using the number representationLink opens in a new window construal
  12. The malariaLink opens in a new window construal as documented in EM paper #120Link opens in a new window.
  13. The pianoLink opens in a new window construal (see Project List and supplementary notes) as documented in EM paper #125Link opens in a new window.
  14. The Bouncing BallLink opens in a new window and JUGSLink opens in a new window construals in the mobile MCE

Acknowledgments: Thanks are due to the CONSTRUIT! project team, especially to Nicolas Pope, Elizabeth Hudnott and Jonathan Foss for their work on the MCE.