Debugging by Design: Developing a Tool Set for Debugging with Electronic Textiles to Promote Computational and Engineering Thinking in High School

Sponsor: National Science Foundation

PI: Ann Eisenberg听(Institute for Cognitive Science), co-PI Mark D Gross

Debugging is pervasive in both computing education and more generally in problem-solving across many disciplines. "Debugging by Design" focuses on the development of debugging for engineering electronic textiles as a central computational thinking practice by putting engineering into high school computer science (CS) classrooms. Unlike traditional approaches that teach debugging strategies, the goal of this project is to investigate a new instructional approach called "debugging by design" where the researchers turn the tables by having students and teachers themselves design debugging activities and materials supported by debugging tools. The deliverables of the project include (a) debugging tool support that can help teachers and students debug the code and circuit designs in their advanced electronic textiles; (b) designs and implementations of instructional debugging activities that can be created and used by students and their teachers in Exploring Computer Science high school classrooms; and (c) student and teacher data and analysis that provide evidence on how doing and designing debugging activities can further students' computational thinking and foster a growth mindset.