Fostering Interdisciplinary Learning for Elementary Students Through Developing Interactive Digital Stories
Authors: 
Anisha Gupta, Andy Smith, Jessica Vandenberg, Rasha ElSayed, Kimkinyona Fox, James Minogue, Aleata Hubbard Cheuoua, Kevin Oliver, Cathy Ringstaff, Bradford MottAuthors Info & Claims
Pages 50 - 67
Abstract
Recent years have seen growing awareness of the potential digital storytelling brings to creating engaging K-12 learning experiences. By fostering students’ interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, digital storytelling holds great promise for realizing positive impacts on student learning in language arts as well as STEM subjects. In parallel, researchers and practitioners increasingly acknowledge the importance of computational thinking in supporting K-12 students’ problem solving across subjects and grade levels, including science and elementary school. Integrating the unique affordances of digital storytelling and computational thinking offers significant potential; however, careful attention must be given to ensure students and teachers are properly supported and not overwhelmed. In this paper, we present our work on a narrative-centered learning environment that engages upper elementary students (ages 9 to 11) in computational thinking and physical science through the creation of interactive science narratives. Leveraging log data from a pilot study with 28 students using the learning environment, we analyze the narrative programs students created across multiple dimensions to better understand the nature of the resulting narratives. Furthermore, we examine automating this analysis using artificial intelligence techniques to support real-time adaptive feedback. Results indicate that the learning environment enabled students to create interactive digital stories demonstrating their understanding of physical science, computational thinking, and narrative concepts, while the automated assessment techniques showed promise for enabling real-time feedback and support.
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Nov 2023
330 pages
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.
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Springer-Verlag
Berlin, Heidelberg
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Published: 11 November 2023
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