Page 73 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Defining and Observing Modeling and Simulation in Computer Science
indications of students’ difficulties connected to each of the elements (see the following section).
3.4 Results
There were seven project teams. Five teams consisted of two students; one of
three students, and one student opted to work by himself. Six of seven projects
were successful; Team 5 did not finish theirs and did not turn in all the required 3 project documentation.
Team 1 modeled chemical reactions and explored the resulting pH factor. Team 2 modeled lottery and explored how long people are willing to keep playing, depending on their winnings. Team 3 modeled the propagation of the Ebola virus and explored the possible effect of a vaccine on its propagation and the survival rate of those infected. Team 4 explored the influence of various factors to the length of time people stay at a party. Team 5 — who did not finish their project — set out to explore the influence of various factors on ice cream sales. Team 6 explored the growth and evolution of a colony of bacteria. Finally, team 7 explored whether mousetraps were more effective than cats in catching mice.
3.4.3 Results
We first present an overview of visible occurrences of the elements of our modeling operationalization, organized by data source and student (team): see table 3. Some elements were combined — see the descriptions below.
We now summarize the findings of our more in-depth analysis, organized by the elements of our operational description. We state our findings in general terms and illustrate them with characteristic text segments taken from the data.
Purpose. In the project documentation all teams clearly stated the purpose of their models. However, in the recordings we saw students tinkering with NetLogo and looking at existing models before deciding what phenomenon they wanted to model and explore. In answering the survey question whether it was difficult to decide what phenomenon to model and explore, four students answered affirmative and told us they had difficulties figuring out what could or could not be modeled. For S4a, who explored the behavior of partygoers together with S4b, the most important lesson learned during his work on this project was that it was important to have a clear idea of the purpose of the model before engaging in the modeling process — a thought shared by three other students in the survey.
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