Making construals as a new digital skill:

Dissolving the program - and the programmer - interface

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CONSTRUIT!

• Meurig Beynon

• Jonny Foss

• Elizabeth Hudnott

• Steve Russ

• Chris Hall

… and the other members of the CONSTRUIT! team

construit.org

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Key concerns

• Supporting constructionism – learners as

teachers and developers

• Enabling adaptation of open educational

resources by teachers and learners

• Blurring the distinction between players and

developers in computer games (“mods”)

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Making construals

In making a construal

Construal

Referent

Understanding

Context

co-evolve

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Construal/Program

A program has an abstract functionality …

… a construal offers interactive experience

A program has a formal semantics …

… a construal expresses informal meanings

The meaning is in the connection with the world

cf. the examinations spreadsheet …

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Semantics

Lucy

Fred

Bret

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5

7

7

4

6

7

8 6

Art RE PE Ave

7.0

5.3

6.0

• Cell as MARK • Column as SUBJECT

‘dependencies’ ‘observables’

Who can change what, when?

Known/expected effects

Fluent connection

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Observables

Student identities Marks in subjects Average for student

Spreadsheet Row Spreadsheet Column Spreadsheet Cell

Counterparts of observables ‘making a connection in experience’

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Constitution …

• observables: entities to which we can attribute an identity and a current value

• dependencies amongst observables: changing the value of one observable in one and the same action changes the value of another

• the agency that acts upon them: human or machine actions deemed to be responsible for changing the values of observables

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Shopping construal

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Shopping examples

Observables and dependencies

the items for sale, the items selected for purchase, the coins being offered and the coins that remain in the purse … visually represented on the canvas

the total cost of the items in the basket, and how much money has been offered … defined by dependency, no visual counterparts

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Shopping examples

Agents and agency

customer can select coins and select items

teacher can change prices or purse content

automated oracle can generate random coins

maker can introduce and refine definitions:

× haveenoughmoney is totalcost < spendingmoney; ×

Every agent action is (re)definition of observables

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Dissolve interfaces

Redefinition via Input Window for all in principle

… but can craft an interface for learner in canvas

Teacher can identify and correct simple errors

haveenoughmoney is totalcost <= spendingmoney;

Supporting the maker role …

dissolving the ‘program interface’ and the interface to the programmer

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Inspecting a script

AN ACTION

SCRIPT EXTRACT

A DEFINITION

A FUNCTION

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Exploit construals

To derive educational resources from construals:

• conceive the transformation of the existing observables

• identify the names of the relevant observables

• reconfigure the observables, definitions and agency

Live demonstration with Shopping construal at

jseden.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/construit

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Scaffolding learning

Building on the basic Shopping Construal …

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A Shopping game

As derived from the basic Shopping construal by a process of conception, identification and reconfiguration intended to be accessible to a computing non-specialist

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More re construals

How do you think it works? ... and how we think IT works

For more info, contact Meurig Beynon: wmb@dcs.warwick.ac.uk and attend the CONSTRUIT! workshop tomorrow 11-12:

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to:

Tim Monks, Nick Pope, Ant Harfield, Joe Butler

for their work on developing JS-EDEN

Mike Joy as the Coordinator for CONSTRUIT!

Thank you

Any questions?