Number of diaries: 20

4 questions

Not all of the students provided answers to the questions. Some replies were very general or vague that they did not bring any significant information (i.e. ‘I like the program’ ‘I liked everything’ ‘Everything went well’ ‘Nothing to mention’ etc)

Diary:

Name….. Date……

Reflect upon your experience

What went well…

What did not go well…

What did you like the most…

What did you dislike or like the least…

General remarks

  • In general students’ replies reflect a level of satisfaction about their construal making experience. Strong aspects include the working atmosphere, the interaction with a team of experts…
  • It seems that the students enjoyed the interaction with the Construit! team members. This was an interesting and unique experience for them.
  • The tasks were considered as ‘difficult’. Most of the students closely link the successful completion of the tasks to the good collaboration with the Construit! team members and the support they were provided with. Collaboration with classmates was also mentioned as a vehicle to deal with the problems.
  • There is an indication of Paperts’ conception of ‘hard fun’. For example Christos V. (15 years old) when prompt to refer to what did not go well and what liked the most mentions:

Student’s name: Christos V.
What did not go well / For me the 3rd task did not go well because it was very difficult. I struggled at finding a solution and I did not submit the task on time.
What I like the most / I liked it when we were making the figures. It was fun and enjoyable!
  • The students were also referred to language barriers…which nevertheless did not affect their engagement in the tasks.
  • There is also a suggestion for fewer tasks;the tasks were considered too many.
  • There are students that closely relate their workshop experience to the engagement in programming/coding. Some of them called this as an introduction to ‘serious programming’.
  • Some technical problems were also mentioned. These are related to JS-Eden environment that does not offer the option of saving your work and to the ICT school lab (2 students were facing problems with the keyboard).

Students’ replies were grouped together under coming threads running through them and are summarized in the tables below. More replies were addressed to the two last questions (what did you like the most/ what did you like the least or dislike).

What did you like the most?

Threads

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Frequency

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Selected quotes

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Notes

Interaction with a group of experts/ Support / 6 out of 20 / ‘That we were surrounded by many experts who were good people, friendly and very helpful’ (Marios, 15 years old)
‘That I met experts and university students and I worked very close to them on the tasks’ (Dimitris, 15 years old)
‘that I met good people and there was a good working atmosphere’ (Natalia, 15 years old)
‘that we were taught by people from different countries with expertise in the area and willingness to help us learn something new’(Teodora, 15 years old)
That when we were facing a problem there was a team of experts who were nice and willing to help us (Fillipos, 15 years old)
Engagement in programming tasks / 5 out of 20 / “They motivated us and we were smoothly introduced to a programming environment.” (Menelaos, 15 years old)
‘Finally we did some serious programming!’ (Vasilis, 15 years old)
‘that I was involved in serious programming tasks!’ (Lefteris, 15 years old)
Related to JS-Eden and construal making tasks / 4 out of 20 / ‘When we used commands to show pictures.’ (Chris, 15 years old)
‘I like it when we were making figures. It was fun and enjoyable’ (Christos V, 15 years old)
‘The task with the planets moving around the sun was the one that I mostly liked’ (Eleni, 15 years old)
‘The animation’ (Maria, 15 years old)
Interaction with classmates / 2 out of 20 / ‘that I worked very well with my friend. The tasks were difficult but we made it because we had a good collaboration’ (Paris, 15 years old)
Related to the whole workshop experience / 1 out 20 / That we used English language for communicative purposes (Bartek, 15 years old) / This reply was addressed by an non Greek native speaker student

What did you like the least?

Threads

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Frequency

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Selected quotes

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Notes

Content and context / 6 out of 20 / It was a nice course I think but I did not like the fact that the tasks were too many. It would be more interesting if we were able to watch a video in addition to what we did, to make some jokes or even to put some background music on (Natalia, 15 years old)
‘I did like that I missed my break […]’. (Argiro, 15 years old)
‘I did not like it when we were trying to make the figures’ (Eleni, 15 years old)
‘The tasks were too many’ (Christos, 15 years old)
Level of difficulty / 5 out of 20 / ‘That what we had to do was very difficult. But I think we made it working collaboratively’ (Paris, 15 years old)
‘It was very difficult but we made it’ (Dimitris, 15 years old)
‘While you were progressing the tasks were becoming even harder. This is what I did not like’ (Marios, 15 years old)
“[…]The tasks were difficult and I did not gain a good understanding’ (Argiro, 15 years old) / Can we link this to the conception of ‘hard fun’?
Technical problems related to JS-Eden / 2 out of 20 / ‘We did something and then all of the sudden the browser crashed and then we had to do everything from the beginning!’ (Filippos, 15 years old)
Support/ Language barriers / 1 out of 20 / Some people of the team did not speak good English and I could not get them and they were waiting till we find the solution (Teodora, 15 years old)

What went well

Threads

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Frequency

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Selected quotes

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Notes

Context / 2 out of 20 / The collaboration with the experts and the university students. They were supportive and nice (Bartek, 15 years old).
Skills (that were practiced)/ Knowledge gained / 3 out of 20 / ‘I had the opportunity to practice my English. I also realized that there are many people that know a lot about computers apart from me (Paris, 15 years old)
‘We learn a new program and we familiarize ourselves with it through tasks’ (Filippos, 15 years old)
Resources/ Workshop design / 2out of 20 / We followed the worksheet, made notes on it and we managed to understand the programming language (Teodora, 15 years old)
‘The presentation was very nice. I like it’ (Christos, 15 years old) / (??? Not very sure if this statement reveals information about the quality of the resources…)
Maybe is risky to generalize.

What did not go well

Threads

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Frequency

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Selected quotes

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Notes

Language barriers / 3 out of 20 / There was I think a small issue with English language (Christos, 15 years old).
‘It was not ok that they speak better English than I do’ (Paris, 15 years old)
‘They did not speak Greek and it seems they did not understand our English’ (Dimitris, 15 years old)
Content / 3 out of 20 / ‘
‘I think the second part did not go that well. The one with the planet system’ (Menelaos, 15 years old)
‘Some tasks had some tricks and took me a lot of time to understand’ (Eleni, 15 years old)
For me the 3rd task did not go well because it was very difficult. I struggled at finding a solution and I did not submit the task on time.
(Christos V, 15 years old)
Technical problems related to JS-Eden environment / 2 out of 20 / We did not complete the activity. There was a problem with the browser and we had to do it again (Marios, 15 years old)
Technical problems related to the school ICT lab / 2 out of 20 / The keyboard was not working well (Vasilis, 15 years old)
Support / 2out of 20 / Sometimes I was asking for help but I did not get the support I was expecting to get (Argyro, 15 years old)
1 / Draft analysis