Teaching Abstract Computer Science Concepts to High School Students: A Multiple-Perspective Approach

The instructional framework of Experiential-based Learning of Computer Science (ELCS) was developed based on the experiential learning perspective to support high school students to learn abstract concepts of computer science. ELCS aims to provide flexible-to-adopt, ease-of-use, from-concrete-to-abstract, and from-observation-to-experimentation digital materials on computer science concepts to fulfill the High School Computer Curricula of Taiwan 2010. Various types of digital media, such as graphics, pictures, animations, simulations, instructional games, etc., were employed to provide multiple perspectives toward computer science concepts through examples of concrete experiences, contexts for reflective observation, conceptual models for abstract conceptualization and contexts for active experimentation. A quality evaluation of expert review revealed that the ELCS materials were appropriately designed with average scores ranging from 3.59 to 4.24 on a 5-point scale for the quality aspects of objectives, scope-been-covered, time allocation, concrete experiences, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. A further analysis showed that the concrete-concept units achieved better quality than the abstract-concept units in the quality aspects of scope, concrete experiences and reflective observation. Further efforts were suggested to improve the concreteness and explicitness of the abstract-concept units of ELCS to facilitate the successful construction of multiple perspectives in the learners.