Table 4 Types of agent-based thinking challenges and scaffolds
From: Identifying middle school students’ challenges in computational thinking-based science learning
Types of challenges | Description | Kinematics unit examples | Ecology unit examples | Scaffolds provided |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Thinking like an agent challenges | Difficulty in modeling a phenomenon in terms of one or more agents, their properties, and their associated sets of distinct rules | Problem delinking turn angle and forward movement to generate shapes; difficulty understanding effects of turning with respect to different headings | Difficulty modeling how an agent gains and loses energy; problem delinking related actions—“face nearest” does not mean going forward as well | Drawing on paper and explaining; making the students imagine themselves as agents; providing external tools and artifacts to help understand and replicate agent behavior; enacting agent behavior and making students predict such behavior; prompts to visualize agent behavior mentally; reminder that an agent does only what it is programmed to do |
Agent-aggregate relationship challenges | Difficulty understanding that aggregate-level outcomes can be dependent on multiple agent procedures and debugging such a procedure requires checking each of the associated agent procedures; difficulty reasoning about the role and importance of individual agents in an aggregate system | Did not occur | Difficult understanding that aggregate outcomes like O2 levels may depend on multiple agent procedures | Reminder about different agents which can affect a particular aggregate-level outcome |