Page 125 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Students’ Understanding and Difficulties
6.1 Introduction
In this final study of our project, we focus on students’ understanding and difficulties while working on Computational Science assignments.
In our first study (chapter 3) — focused on Magnusson’s component M1
concerned with the goals and objectives as well as curricula related to a specific
topic being taught — we obtained an operational description of the learning
objective Computational Science that describes the modeling cycle for simulation
modeling through its elements purpose, research, abstraction, formulation, requirements/specification, implementation, verification/validation, experiment,
analysis, reflection. We also identified specific challenges the students experience
when engaging in modeling activities: difficulties to decide what phenomenon to
model, to determine the right level of abstraction, and to formulate the problem
under scrutiny suitably for modeling through ABM; inadequate programming
knowledge, inability to correctly attribute unexpected program behavior to either
errors in the model itself or to emergent behavior of the model, and finally, not
conducting experiments with their models in a systematic fashion. In our second
study (chapter 4), we explored computer science teachers’ initial PCK on modeling
and simulation and in particular, their ideas about instructional approach to
teaching Computational Science and assessment. The finding of these two studies
informed the development of our teaching materials, a practical assignment 6 and an accompanying assessment instrument. In our third study (chapter 5), we
focused on the development of that assessment instrument to monitor the levels of understanding in the learning outcomes of students engaging in modeling projects, thus focusing on Magnusson’s component M4.
In this study, we focus on students’ understanding and difficulties while working on Computational Science assignments using the teaching materials we developed — Magnusson’s component M2. Our aim is to explore these, with a particular focus on their actions leading to the development of valid models. We seek to answer the following research question:
1. How can the students’ understanding of model validation be portrayed in terms of validation techniques they employ to ensure the development of valid models?
2. What difficulties do the students encounter when verifying and validating their models?
123