CS Unplugged or Coding Classes?

In this episode I unpack Bell’s (2021) publication titled “CS unplugged or coding classes? Perhaps a more appropriate question is ‘why not both’?,” which argues there’s value in doing both unplugged and coding lessons.

• Auto-generated transcript (click to expand)

  Welcome back to another episode of the

  CSK89 podcast my name is jared o'leary

  each week of the podcast alternates

  between a solo episode where i unpack

  some scholarship and an episode where i

  interview

  one or multiple guests in this week's

  particular episode i'm unpacking a paper

  titled cs unplugged or coding classes

  perhaps a more appropriate question is

  why not both

  this paper was written by tim bell and i

  include a link to it in the show notes

  which you can find by clicking the link

  in the description that you're listening

  to this on or by simply going to

  jaredlery.com

  in the show notes if you click on the

  author's last name you'll be able to

  read more papers by them as it takes you

  to their google scholar profile

  or if you click on the title itself for

  the paper it takes you directly to it

  and in the show notes and on the website

  you'll find hundreds if not thousands of

  resources relevant to cs educators

  including a link to the curriculum that

  i create at budapedi.org

  which is for scratch junior and for

  scratch there's about 90 lessons at the

  moment and it's all 100

  free so if you haven't checked it out

  yet i highly recommend it

  but i'm the person who wrote it so i'm a

  bit biased

  all right so this paper does not have an

  abstract it's actually only three pages

  long

  with some pictures and so it's very

  short so i highly recommend checking it

  out

  if i were to summarize this particular

  paper into a single sentence i'd say

  that the author is arguing that there's

  value in doing both unplugged and coding

  lessons

  all right so if you're new to computer

  science or haven't heard of the idea of

  unplugged lessons unplugged lessons are

  essentially lessons that are done

  without devices

  so for example if kids are going to be

  learning about conditionals you might do

  an unplugged lesson or activity

  such as like red light green light so

  you'd be like if i hold up a green pen

  then take a step forward if i hold up a

  red pin

  stop taking a step forward etc there are

  many different ways that you can do

  unplugged lessons and activities

  csta usually has a couple of sessions

  dedicated specifically to this

  in their conference over the summer

  which is coming up in july and i'll

  include a link to that in the show notes

  all right so at the start of this paper

  the author is arguing that

  unplugged lessons have been around since

  the 90s so for about 30 years

  and some people might view this as a bit

  of a contradiction so you might see

  unplugged lessons and go well why why

  would you do that like why wouldn't you

  just like actually create something with

  a computer

  learn code so as an analogy if you were

  to think of a music class it would be

  like learning about

  an instrument and how it works but not

  actually ever getting to play it

  yeah that's great i've learned the

  fingering patterns for a recorder

  i learned to use a soft warm breath but

  i never actually got to

  play a recorder however some other

  people view it and say well this

  actually provides a really good way to

  reduce the screen

  time get some exercise and engage in

  concepts and practices

  in a kinesthetic way not to mention this

  might be helpful for teachers who can't

  afford

  devices such as tablets etc in the

  example that i was just providing with a

  recorder maybe you don't have a class

  set of recorders so you might learn how

  to do it and you'll learn how to sing

  but you won't actually get to play it

  because you can't afford it where this

  can become a problem according to the

  author

  is if it's viewed as a curriculum so

  only doing 100 unplugged lessons

  and considering that to be enough this

  might create some issues because some

  administrators quote

  might justify a lack of funding by

  suggesting that schools use unplugged

  teaching instead of buying devices

  end quote that's from page 25. so as a

  way to save

  money and to cut costs might be like

  yeah well that's nice you want to do

  computer science

  but we don't have devices so just do

  unplugged instead

  this i would argue can create

  decontextualized learning depending on

  how the unplugged is used as you're not

  actually able to situate and apply the

  understandings within a context

  so going back to the example of the

  recorder like in a general music class

  yeah you might be learning to use a warm

  slow air

  you might be learning the different

  fingering techniques you might be

  learning how to read the music

  you're not actually making music so

  you're going through the motions you're

  learning some of the concepts but you're

  not actually able to apply it by

  actually creating music or in this case

  actually creating

  something through computer science or

  through code so in the

  second half of the intro the author is

  mentioning that for some people

  there's research that shows that unplug

  can help out

  and for other people they found that

  well unplugged may have been

  a waste of time or not as valuable as

  learning how to actually code

  so the author ends this particular

  introduction by asking the question

  so why does it work for some and not for

  others okay so here's a brief

  elaboration on what

  unplugged might look like so i gave you

  an example with a red light green light

  but on page 25 the author says quote

  students construct their own knowledge

  by engaging with computational

  challenges based on

  concisely described rules where the

  process of solving the challenge gives

  them understanding of significant

  principles

  they work with games and puzzles that

  have constraints that occur in computing

  and this enables students to discover

  important ideas from computer science

  such as the insight that an algorithm

  does not necessarily take twice as long

  to process twice as much data

  or to understand concepts in everyday

  life such as error detection that makes

  barcodes reliable to scan

  or to grapple with the limits of what

  can be computed end quote

  so further in this particular section

  the author mentions that unplugged

  activities were not meant to replace

  programming

  but instead to introduce kids to

  thinking as a computer scientist or

  engaging in experiences

  from the perspective of a computer

  scientist without necessarily having to

  depend on being able to code

  now one of the reasons why this is

  important is it can contextualize or

  situate the understandings and provide

  some context

  that might not be evident within the

  software itself so it's connecting it

  with real world experiences and

  understandings

  it's also helpful because not everybody

  can afford devices

  however it's also useful in increasing

  self-efficacy

  and getting more kids interested in

  computer science through a variety

  of activities rather than just sitting

  in front of a computer programming

  something

  which for some is very exciting and for

  others that's very boring

  in addition the author mentions that

  computer science is not just coding

  so there are other things that you can

  do besides programming but i would argue

  that is a large part of computer science

  or at least can be especially in the

  elementary space so the author mentions

  that unplugged really kind of

  gained a foothold in the research and

  k-12 world

  when there was a study that did two

  different groups so one group spent 10

  weeks doing unplugged activities before

  learning how to code

  and then another group spent 10 weeks

  just learning how to code

  and they found basically no difference

  in performance

  between the two different groups having

  not read that particular study yet

  i am curious what other factors might

  need to be taken into account so for

  example

  how engaged were students in this yes

  their performance might be the same but

  do they walk away from one of the groups

  going okay well computer science

  is boring or do they walk away from the

  group going yeah this was awesome i

  really want to do that and the other

  group is just kind of indifferent

  but i don't know because i haven't read

  that study yet they do note however that

  quote the unplugged first group

  showed self-efficacy and a wider

  vocabulary of commands

  end quote page 26 so

  maybe there are more benefits from doing

  a pairing of the two so the next section

  of this paper is titled goals of

  introducing cs to young learners

  so the first goal is it's not just

  knowledge and skills so the author

  argues that in order to address some of

  the diversity issues that is going on in

  the computing industry we need to reach

  a wider range of individuals and that

  unplugs might be one way to kind of

  spark an interest in computer science

  we also need to consider that not

  everyone has access to devices

  so in addition to the economic access

  there might also be like philosophical

  differences so some schools do not allow

  devices

  until a certain age group and then there

  might be some legal considerations that

  are

  denying access so for example prison

  inmates are not allowed access to some

  computers

  so in order to learn computer science in

  those kind of contexts you need to

  engage in something without a device so

  unplugged works really well for that

  and then again the author mentions that

  computer science is more than

  programming

  all right so the next main section is

  why does unplugged work for some

  and not for others so there are three

  main things that the author mentions one

  is that context is important

  so if you're doing unplugged in a

  computer lab kids might be like well why

  are we doing this when we have computers

  right there and we can actually learn

  how to code

  and if you instead do it in a gym they

  might be more excited

  just because of the novel experience of

  it they're in a different space

  doing something that is new we also need

  to

  consider the context in relation to

  individual learners

  so are they actually excited about this

  what do they value what are they

  expecting to get out of this

  so the next thing to consider is that cs

  unplugged is not a curriculum

  even though it's sometimes treated that

  way the author argues that it is instead

  a pedagogical approach

  quote indeed interventions that

  attempted to use cs unplugged as a

  self-contained curriculum

  instead of weaving it into the existing

  one have been found to be ineffective

  end quote

  now question that i have is ineffective

  at what

  maybe it's ineffective at teaching a

  concept of practice but maybe it's super

  effective at getting kids motivated to

  continue their learning in computer

  science also what kind of effect does it

  have down the road so if

  you only did unplugged in elementary

  space let's say

  and then a kid gets to middle school

  maybe they're super excited to engage in

  programming with devices

  compared to maybe students who were

  already programming all through

  middle school using devices but i don't

  know this is me being a devil's advocate

  and just expressing that i don't

  actually know what it was ineffective at

  and why all right so the last thing is

  that teachers need support so cs is

  constantly updating there's many new

  things that teachers need

  to learn so unplugged might be a way

  that we can help teachers

  who do not have a background in computer

  science or don't have the time

  necessarily to stay up to date on

  everything

  providing some unplugged lessons might

  be able to help them

  learn concepts and teach them in an easy

  and user-friendly way

  for teachers who are new to computer

  science

  all right so i'm going to end this

  particular paper by giving a quote from

  page 27 which is quote

  when unplugged was created 30 years ago

  it was designed for quite a different

  context to the curricula now appearing

  around the world

  and yet it has emerged as a useful tool

  as part of the many approaches available

  for engaging a variety of students in

  computer science

  a combination of approaches is needed if

  we wish to engage a diverse range of

  students

  we must support teachers to adopt an

  appropriate selection

  of teaching methods in quote all right

  so this particular quote kind of leads

  into

  my lingering questions or thoughts so

  i'm going to share some things that i

  was thinking of when i read this

  particular paper

  so a question that i have for you

  listener is how do you use unplugged in

  your classes

  and when do you use it and when do you

  not use it

  so some things that you might consider

  some of the things that i considered

  when i was determining whether i should

  or should not use

  unplugged in relation to the classes

  that i was working with

  or questions like okay so unplug lessons

  can be a lot of fun

  but does that mean we should use them in

  place of coding with the device when

  should we do that when should we not do

  that

  is it to introduce a particular concept

  or practice

  or is it used to reinforce a concept or

  practice

  is it when you're trying to introduce

  something you can't easily do on a

  device

  or it might take too long to code

  something or program something and

  instead you just want kids to

  get the main idea but not necessarily

  know how to recreate that thing

  so for me i personally used it to

  reinforce an idea

  so i situated it within the middle of a

  project that might use it

  but unplugged was never used for the

  sake of just doing unplugged

  and i very rarely did it in advance of a

  concept

  it was basically prn which means like as

  needed

  so for example if some kids in the

  classes that are working with were

  all engaging on different projects in

  different platforms and languages and i

  noticed that they are having an issue

  with a particular concept

  i might introduce an unplugged lesson

  that is related to that concept

  to kind of help out that group of

  students or an entire class so for

  example in the lessons that i've created

  at bootuppd.org

  the unplugged section that's in each one

  of the lesson plans

  provides an example of where you could

  maybe spend the first class

  introducing a project and starting work

  on it the second class is diving deeper

  into it

  maybe the third class is dedicated to

  an unplugged lesson or a portion of that

  as dedicated to an unplugged lesson that

  really reinforces

  what kids are learning in their project

  and then the remaining classes or class

  after that would encourage them to

  continue to apply their understandings

  within the project that they had already

  started

  so for example if this were a project

  that took four days to work on

  you might introduce the unplugged lesson

  on lesson two or less than three

  so that way it's situated within the

  project itself

  rather than decontextualized so this is

  an

  inspiration from james paul g in

  particular who wrote a book on situated

  language and learning and we discussed

  this in the interview that i did with

  brian brown so if you haven't checked

  that out yet i link to that in the show

  notes

  and include links to g's books the

  approach is basically

  learning something when you need it

  rather than in advance of application

  all right so the way that g might

  describe computational thinking or at

  least the way that it's introduced where

  it's often positioned before actual

  application of understanding in a

  programming platform is that's kind of

  like saying okay we're going to play

  this video game but before you actually

  play the video game

  you're going to read the entire

  instruction manual so you're going to

  learn how to do stuff that you can't do

  yet

  or isn't relevant to you at the moment

  now that's a bit of an extreme because

  usually unplugged focuses on one concept

  rather than like all of them at once but

  the approach

  that i mentioned earlier with the

  conditionals like if

  i'm holding up a green pen it's going to

  mean one thing and if i hold up a red

  pen it means a different thing

  that might not be relevant to a student

  if they don't know well why would i

  need to do that in my project if instead

  they get to a point where they

  are maybe working on a story and they're

  like hey i want to make it so that when

  they click on this button

  it'll do this thing but if they click on

  this other thing it'll do something else

  and it'll give like different story

  options

  okay that's an excellent moment to say

  cool we have a way that you can do that

  using this thing called conditionals so

  it situates that learning within it

  so what i would actually like to see for

  future research is

  comparison of not just doing unplugged

  before coding and comparing that to a

  group where they're just coding

  i want to also see a group where they do

  unplugged situated within the middle of

  a particular project so again

  if let's say it takes five days to do a

  project maybe doing the unplugged on

  day two or day three rather than at the

  beginning

  seeing how that compares not only in

  terms of performance but also in terms

  of interest and motivation to want to

  learn that concept

  my guess is kids will be more interested

  in learning it because they know they

  need to know it

  to actually apply it in their project at

  least that's how it came across with the

  kids that i worked with in the classes

  that i was in

  now another question to consider when

  engaging in these unplugged is

  when might you'd use unplugged without

  situating it within

  application of understanding on a device

  so there are definitely moments where it

  makes more sense to teach a concept

  especially if you need to have students

  understand it

  so for example if you are trying to

  cover all the standards which is

  something we could problematize but i

  want in this episode but if you're

  trying to cover all the standards

  some of them might not especially at the

  younger grades you might not actually be

  able to

  create something with that particular

  standard it's just learning a concept

  and going okay i understand that but i'm

  not necessarily going to make something

  with that concept so maybe an unplugged

  is really beneficial

  in that moment another question that you

  might consider is when might you just

  use coding on its own so for example if

  you are situating understandings within

  a project

  maybe you don't actually need unplugged

  to reinforce an understanding or maybe

  you do

  regardless of which approach you take

  and i'm not trying to argue that you

  should do my approach to putting in the

  middle of a project

  because you might not be engaging in

  project-based learning instead what i'm

  arguing

  is just consider the different ideas of

  how you can

  use the two in parallel or in

  conjunction with each other

  to reinforce understandings or introduce

  a new concept

  regardless of which option or options

  you choose to do with kids

  consider how do you engage in either

  approach in a way that contextualizes or

  situates learning

  in particular how do you do so in a way

  that allows students to apply their

  understandings

  beyond the one-off lesson so while i'm a

  fan of computer science and i

  love learning more about it i'm not a

  fan of computer science for the sake of

  learning computer science

  so for example if you do a lesson where

  it's about a particular concept or

  practice

  but kids aren't able to actually use

  that understanding outside of that

  lesson in itself

  or outside of the classroom what was the

  point of that

  okay that was a really neat thing but

  what am i going to use that

  but that's my own biases in relation to

  philosophical or pedagogical approaches

  to education

  so feel free to disagree with me and by

  the way if you ever would like to

  be a guest on the show you can press the

  contact me button on my website

  where we can talk about things that you

  might disagree with me on everything in

  education is gray and i'm just

  presenting

  my perspective while also trying to

  consider other perspectives that i might

  not agree with with the hopes that it

  helps you in some way to

  think through your own classes alright

  so the questions that i was asking the

  things that are sharing at the end

  probably were longer than it would take

  you to actually read the article itself

  but i do highly recommend reading

  through it

  as it did lead to some thoughts for

  myself that i'm still considering

  and don't necessarily have a answer for

  that i think is applicable

  in all situations if you enjoyed this

  episode please consider sharing with

  somebody else

  make sure you check out all the

  resources on my website

  and check out the free curriculum that i

  create at bootuppd.org

  stay tuned next week for another

  interview and the following week for

  another unpacking scholarship

  episode hope you're all staying safe and

  are having a wonderful week

Article

Bell, T. (2021). CS unplugged or coding classes? Perhaps a more appropriate question is “why not both”? Communications of the ACM, 64(5), 25–27.

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My One Sentence Summary

This author argues there’s value in doing both unplugged and coding lessons.

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Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

• How do you use unplugged in your classes? When do/n’t you use unplugged in your classes?

• When might you use unplugged without situating it within application of understanding on a device?

• When might you use coding on it’s own?

• How do you engage in either approach in a way that contextualizes or situates the learning?

  • How do you do so in a way that allows students to apply understandings beyond the one-off lesson?

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Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

• Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode

  • Contemporary Venues of Curriculum Inquiry

    • In this episode I unpack an excerpt from Schubert’s (2008) publication titled “Curriculum inquiry,” which describes different venues or types of curriculum that educators and education researchers should consider.

  • How to Get Started with Computer Science Education

    • In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.

  • Impact of the Plugged-in and Unplugged Chemistry Computational Thinking Modules on Achievement in Chemistry

    • In this episode I unpack Chongo, Osman, and Nayan’s (2021) publication titled “Impact of the plugged-in and unplugged chemistry computational thinking modules on achievement in chemistry,” which investigated achievement outcomes between a chemistry unit in three groups: 1) chemistry classes integrated with Scratch projects, 2) chemistry classes integrated with both unplugged and Scratch projects, and 3) chemistry classes with no focus on computational thinking.

  • Introducing Coding through Tabletop Board Games and Their Digital Instantiations across Elementary Classrooms and School Libraries

    • In this episode I unpack Lee et al.'s (2020) experience report titled “Introducing coding through tabletop board games and their digital instantiations across elementary classrooms and school libraries," which investigates the transfer of understanding when students begin learning CS through a tabletop board game and switch to a digital coding environment.

  • Performing Algorithms: Weaving as Promising Context for Computational Learning

    • In this episode I unpack Keune’s (2022) publication titled “Performing algorithms: Weaving as promising context for computational learning,” which explores weaving as a potential practice for exploring computer science concepts.

  • Situated Language and Learning with Bryan Brown

    • In this interview Bryan Brown, we discuss the importance of language in education. In particular, we discuss the role of language in teaching and learning, discursive identity, situated language and learning, the importance of representation in education, the role of language on stress, how smartphones and virtual communication platforms (e.g., Zoom) could change learning, and many other topics relevant to CS education and learning.

  • More episodes related to pedagogy

  • More episodes related to unplugged

  • All other episodes

• Check out CSTA’s conference this summer

• Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter

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Free CS Resources I Have Created

• JavaScript (Khan Academy) resources

• Media arts and technology makerspace resources

• Scratch resources

• Sonic Pi resources

• Swift resources

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