Computer Science

Our vision is to make computational modeling a sustained practice in middle school science classrooms. We are working closely with teachers to design a tool and curricula that integrate computational modeling with data practices and enables students to move towards unpacking models and their underlying assumptions. Our research questions involve investigating 1. students modeling trajectories in this environment; 2. how classrooms norms develop over time; and, 3. the interplay between computational modeling and data practices.

This project seeks to develop and validate learning progressions and items with dynamic features to generate machine-scorable student responses for assessing computational thinking, in a test of college-ready critical reasoning skills, and to integrate these items into an existing online assessment system, the Berkeley Assessment System Software (BASS). This assessment is intended to be useful for formative and summative purposes in high-school and introductory college-level STEM classes, including mathematics and computer science courses.