Opening the Black Box: Investigating Student Understanding of Data Displays Using Programmable Sensor Technology Alexandra Gendreau Chakarov University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO alexandra.gendreau@colorado.edu Quentin Biddy University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO quentin.biddy@colorado.edu Jennifer Jacobs University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO jennifer.jacobs@colorado.edu Mimi Recker Utah State University Logan, UT mimi.recker@usu.edu Tamara Sumner University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, CO sumner@colorado.edu ABSTRACT This paper describes the design and classroom implementation of a week-long unit that aims to integrate computational thinking (CT) into middle school science classes using programmable sensor technology. The goals of this sensor immersion unit are to help students understand why and how to use sensor and visualization technology as a powerful data-driven tool for scientifc inquiry in ways that align with modern scientifc practice. The sensor immer- sion unit is anchored in the investigation of classroom data where students engage with the sensor technology to ask questions about and design displays of the collected data. Students frst generate questions about how data data displays work and then proceed through a set of programming exercises to help them understand how to collect and display data collected from their classrooms by building their own mini data displays. Throughout the unit stu- dents draw and update their hand drawn models representing their current understanding of how the data displays work. The sensor immersion unit was implemented by ten middle school science teachers during the 2019/2020 school year. Student drawn models of the classroom data displays from four of these teachers were analyzed to examine students’ understandings in four areas: func- tion of sensor components, process models of data fow, design of data displays, and control of the display. Students showed the best understanding when describing sensor components. Students ex- hibited greater confusion when describing the process of how data streams moved through displays and how programming controlled the data displays. CCS CONCEPTS · Hardware → Sensors and actuators; · Social and professional topics → K-12 education; Computational thinking; Model curricula. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specifc permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. ICER ’20, August 10ś12, 2020, Virtual Event, New Zealand © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7092-9/20/08. . . $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3406268 KEYWORDS Computational Thinking, Middle School Science, Micro:bit, Sensors ACM Reference Format: Alexandra Gendreau Chakarov, Quentin Biddy, Jennifer Jacobs, Mimi Recker, and Tamara Sumner. 2020. Opening the Black Box: Investigating Student Understanding of Data Displays Using Programmable Sensor Technology. In Proceedings of the 2020 International Computing Education Research Con- ference (ICER ’20), August 10ś12, 2020, Virtual Event, New Zealand. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3372782.3406268 1 INTRODUCTION Over the last 10 years educators and researchers have employed a wide variety of strategies to increase access to computational thinking experiences. Research has explored integrating compu- tational thinking into the existing science and mathematics cur- ricula [11, 19, 23, 37] with computational thinking being explicitly called out in the new United States Science Standards (Next Gen- eration Science Standards (NGSS))[23]. Integrating computational thinking into math and science classes that are already part of the K-12 curriculum provides an opportunity to engage all students in activities involving computational thinking. This avoids the pitfall of requiring students to opt-in to such activities since many com- puter science and engineering classes that focus on computational thinking are electives. Modern scientifc disciplines increasingly rely on computational tools and methods when they are practiced outside of the classroom [2, 16]. As such, science classes provide a rich space for integra- tion by employing inquiry-based instructional approaches that are designed to make classroom scientifc investigations closer to the practices of real scientists [23, 29, 36]. This paper describes the design and classroom implementation of a week-long unit that aims to integrate computational think- ing (CT) into middle school science classes using programmable sensor technology. The goals of this sensor immersion unit are to help students understand how sensor and data display technologies can be used as powerful tools for scientifc inquiry in ways that align with modern scientifc practice. The unit is anchored in the investigation of classroom environmental data where students en- gage with and program the sensor technology to collect and design mini-displays of their data. The unit is also designed to augment other science units in the middle school curriculum by providing an initial context for students to use sensor technology as a way to Day 4: Artifacts, Design and Tools ICER ‘20, August 10–12, 2020, Virtual Event, New Zealand 291