Impact of the Plugged-in and Unplugged Chemistry Computational Thinking Modules on Achievement in Chemistry

In this episode I unpack Chongo, Osman, and Nayan’s (2021) publication titled “Impact of the plugged-in and unplugged chemistry computational thinking modules on achievement in chemistry,” which investigated achievement outcomes between a chemistry unit in three groups: 1) chemistry classes integrated with Scratch projects, 2) chemistry classes integrated with both unplugged and Scratch projects, and 3) chemistry classes with no focus on computational thinking.

Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either an
interview with a guest or multiple
guests or a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's episode
i'm unpacking the paper titled impact of
the plugged in and unplugged chemistry
computational thinking modules on
achievement and chemistry this paper was
written by samri chango kamisa osman and
nazrul anwar nayan apologies that i
mispronounced any names here's the
abstract for this particular paper quote
computational thinking ct is one of the
systematic tools in problem solving and
widely accepted as an important skill in
the 21st century this study aimed to
identify the effectiveness of the
chemistry computational thinking ctcam
module on achievement and chemistry this
study also employed a quasi-experimental
design with the participation of 85 form
of teaching approaches namely ctk module
plugged in ctmp ctk module unplugged and
plugged in ctmup and conventional method
cm were systematically designed and
implemented the achievement of students
was measured using an achievement test
where validity and reliability were
justified and two-way ancova was used to
analyze the data bindings confirmed that
the achievement of students in chemistry
is significantly higher in the ctmp
group as compared with the ctmup and cm
groups instead gender had no significant
effect on students's chemistry
achievement the study concludes that
when students were exposed to teaching
and learning strategies by integrated ct
through plugged in strategy more than a
combination of plugged in and unplugged
plugged in visualization activities are
more effective in increasing the
understanding and achievement of
students compared with the combination
of plugged in and unplugged activities
this is because the abstract concept in
electrochemistry is easier to understand
by students through the visualization
activity approach using a computer and
explaining the important concepts in the
topic and because the whole content is
interrelated end quote about to
summarize this paper into a single
sentence i'd say that this
quasi-experimental study investigated
achievement outcomes between a chemistry
unit in three groups one chemistry
classes integrated with scratch projects
two chemistry classes integrated with
both unplugged and scratch projects and
three chemistry classes with no focus on
computational thinking in the show notes
i do include a link to this paper so you
can check it out as well as a link to
some of the author google scholar
profiles if you want to see more of
their publications and you can find the
show notes at jared o'leary.com or by
clicking the link in the app that you're
listening to this on on my website
you'll find hundreds if not thousands of
computer science education resources
including well over 100 podcasts at this
point and you'll also find some other
nerdy stuff like hundreds of hours of
drumming content and some video game
content because i'm that kind of a nerd
now if you're interested in scratch
which is the platform that they discuss
in this particular paper make sure you
check out the resources on my website
including the link to boot up pd.org
which has 100 free scratch curriculum
that i continue to develop right before
i actually talk about this paper i want
to give a little bit of a caveat there
are some moments in this paper when
reading through it where i feel like
there were some logic leaps both in
terms of the rationale as well as some
of the data so i'm going to point these
out to say i respectfully disagree with
this particular sentiment or statement
and i mean no disrespect to the authors
when i say it because i do appreciate
the work that they're doing i think we
need more studies that investigate stuff
like this but i don't think we can make
some of the assumptions that are made so
for example in the introduction the
authors mentioned that
quote science technology engineering and
mathematics stem has become a popular
term in education worldwide and
chemistry is the center knowledge of
science thus students must master it to
be competent in the field of stem which
is the backbone in the development of a
country end quote a little bit further
down on this particular page quote
accordingly students must master
chemistry which is the basis in science
to be competent in stem as the need to
get hold of 21st century skills the
integration of chemistry with computer
science is a platform to change the
paradigm of students from a user to a
creator to generate new ideas in the
two now i respectfully disagree with
this kind of framing of why chemistry is
important for stem i think chemistry is
important in science and i think the
work of chemists is important across
stem but i don't necessarily think
everyone needs to learn chemistry in
order to do well with stem so for
example i never took a chemistry class
the logic that's kind of expressed here
kind of sounds like you can't be a
competent chef unless you are also
a bladesmith because chefs use knives in
the kitchen a lot so therefore you need
to know how to create the knife i
disagree with that but i do understand
and agree with the importance of
chemistry on our daily lives and in
relation to stem totally agree i also
agree with the authors who mentioned
that the integration of computer science
into other domains can be beneficial and
that it's important to teach problem
solving in schools or to at least engage
in problem-based learning and that
modeling and simulation is also very
important in schools which are all
discussed in the introduction of this
paper now the second section of this
paper is on literature review so in this
particular section they discuss how
cognitive theory constructivist
constructionism project-based learning
and inquiry-based learning were all
important for developing the ctchem
module so if you're interested in
learning more about each one of those
they have a paragraph on each but i've
also talked about i think all of those
in different podcast episodes so you can
check those out by going to the csk8
page on my website and then just sorting
by topic like constructionism and you
can hear more interviews and unpacking
scholarship episodes that talk about
those now in the literature views
section they also mentioned that the two
different ct interventions the one that
used plugged in and the one that used
unplugged both used scratch the plugged
in version had kids going through three
different scratch projects that were
related to chemistry whereas the
unplugged and plugged version only did
two scratch projects as the time that
would have been taken to do the third
one was spent doing unplugged activities
so to elaborate on what was discussed in
the abstract there's basically three
different groups in in this particular
study the first group is the
conventional method they didn't talk
about computer science computational
thinking the second group the plugged in
one used three scratch projects to
explore chemistry through computational
thinking and computer science and then
the third group use a combination of
plugged in scratch projects to scratch
projects with unplugged activities to
explore some of the abstract nature of
chemistry now here's a quote from page
five that's under the methodology
section quote in the study the approach
used by the researchers is
quasi-experimental design using the pre
and the post-test there are two
independent variables which are teaching
approaches three teaching approaches and
gender there are two treatment groups
for the ct module teaching approach the
first treatment is to integrate plugged
in ct ctmp whilst the second treatment
uses ct module which combines unplugged
and plugged in activities ctmup as an
approach in teaching the control group
is the group that follows the
conventional teaching approach cm end
quote so this particular study was done
with 85 students who were age 16 40 of
them were male and 45 of them were
female this was in three different
public schools in malaysia this was
conducted over a six week period with
each session being about 70 minutes
seven zero and the pre and post test
consisted of 20 different objective
questions two essay questions and two
structural questions and this was all
centered around electrochemistry and the
test took about two hours to complete
which sounds like a long test so they
administered this test before the unit
and then they administered it after the
six week period concluded all right so
let's talk about the findings for this
overall they mentioned that quote the
findings of the chemistry achievement
test by gender are insignificant end
quote from page eight while
statistically insignificant for the
total mean between male and female like
males had 44.675
females had
statistically significant difference
there is a difference between male and
female in the three different groups
which is interesting so let's talk about
that so in the control group the control
group was the just conventional method
did not do integration with
computational thinking and computer
science the mean for males was
now what's interesting is these numbers
almost flip when you look at the second
treatment which was the one that had the
unplugged and plugged so for this one
the males scored a 45.2 and females
scored a
a 36.7 but then with unplugged and
plugged males had a 45.2 females on the
other hand had a 46 for the control and
a 38 basically for the unplugged and
plugged so the numbers almost reverse
each other that is a really interesting
finding it makes me wonder well why is
it that for females in this particular
group they scored better with the
conventional method but they scored
worse with the unplugged and plugged
whereas for males they performed worse
on the conventional method but better
with the unplugged and plugged that's
really interesting also makes me wonder
how would this compare for non-binary
and trans folks okay now here's the
group that i haven't talked about yet
for the first treatment group that just
did the plugged in so they just did
three scratch projects and no unplugged
the male scored a 51.313
and the females score to
outperformed the other groups that's a
really interesting finding now i do need
to say that this is not generalizable
this is with three different classes the
findings represent those three classes
this does not mean okay i need to teach
chemistry with scratch but it's at least
something that's interesting to look at
and highlight something that we as a
field should investigate more why is it
that this happened now if we look at the
mean like the combined mean between the
different groups so the authors said
that the group that used the
conventional method the mean was a
unplugged and plugged combination their
mean was a 42.444
that was not statistically significant
so basically means hey these are so
close that
unplugged and plugged didn't really make
a difference compared to the
conventional method however there was a
statistical significant difference
between those two groups and the group
that did the plugged in version so the
group that did the three scratch
projects and no unplugged they had a
mean of
higher than the other two groups and
this was found to be statistically
significant that's interesting now
here's the final two sentences from this
particular paper quote although the main
focus is plugged in unplugged activities
should also be implemented in schools
especially activities outside the
classroom this is because unplugged and
plugged in activities can clearly
improve the chemistry performance and
the ability in solving problems end
quote as from page 12. now i
respectfully disagree with that
particular conclusion based off the
findings it appears as though in the
group that did both the plugged and
unplugged they did not have a
statistically significant difference
between the group that did neither the
control group that just did the
conventional method but maybe
qualitatively the kids had more fun so
if that were the case then yeah maybe we
should do it however it does appear
though that for this particular unit in
this particular abstract concept in
chemistry working with scratch on three
projects was more effective than not
working on scratch at least when it
comes to the scores on this particular
test in this particular unit which gets
into a lingering question that i have
was pbl the reason why they plugged in
group scored higher so the plugged in
group had three projects that they
worked on whereas the unplugged and
plugged group had two and it wasn't
necessarily clear how many projects the
conventional method had so is it more
time spent in projects allows you to
score higher if that's the case how
would that compare with a conventional
group that had three projects that
didn't involve computational thinking or
computer science so for example you had
three experiments that you did instead
of three models or simulations that you
created in scratch how would those
compare another thing that i'm wondering
out loud is well what if kids had more
fun engaging with the plugged and
unplugged even though they might not
have scored better they may have walked
away from it going i like chemistry even
if it doesn't improve the scores
compared to a conventional method if
kids enjoy it more then maybe we should
do that specifically for the improving
enjoyment or interest in chemistry so
another question that i have is how
would the findings change with different
chemistry units so this specifically
focused on electrochemistry but what
about a different area of chemistry and
what about a different subject area for
example if you had done this in an art
class like a group that did plugged in
in scratch a group that did plugged in
and unplugged and then group that just
had a traditional art class how would
those three compare on some kind of art
measurement the last question that i
have is why do you think a combination
of unplugged activities and plugged
activities scored lower than just
plugged in activities the way that
unplugged is typically discussed in the
field is that hey this helps to clarify
concepts and it situates it like it
contextualizes something that is
abstract or difficult to understand or
comprehend and puts it into a real world
context etc but in this case it might
not have done that was it just because
the unplugged activities weren't great
unplugged activities is it because
students were engaged in a novel
experience with scratch and they'd
prefer to spend their time on that so
they were bored with unplugged i
honestly don't know and as a field i
think we don't really have consensus yet
so it would be really interesting to do
more follow-up studies that looked into
some of these different questions my
guess is that it might relate to some of
the discussions i've had with some
podcast guests on situated language and
learning in that scratch situated the
concepts into
a platform that allowed him to
experiment and model and simulate
whereas the unplugged were too abstract
so they didn't really add to or enhance
the learning experience but that's just
a guess i'll include some links to those
episodes in the show notes so make sure
you check those out if you haven't
listened to those particular episodes
like the interview with brian brown
which was a fantastic interview if
however you do have some recommendations
of some studies that are similar to this
quasi-experimental design kind of
explores plugged and unplugged versus no
cs i would love to read them there's a
contact me button on my website
jaredaler.com so feel free to reach out
especially if you know of any studies
that investigate whether or not plugged
in versus unplugged increases enjoyment
of a subject area thank you so much for
listening to this particular episode i
hope it raised some questions that you
might want to explore in the classes
that you work with or in the research
that you conduct but stay tuned next
week for another episode and until then
i hope you're all staying safe and are
having a wonderful week

Article

Chongo, S., Osman, K., & Nayan, N. A. (2021). Impact of the plugged-in and unplugged chemistry computational thinking modules on achievement in chemistry. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 17(4), 1–21.

Abstract

“Abstract Computational thinking (CT) is one of the systematic tools in problem solving and widely accepted as an important skill in the 21st century. This study aimed to identify the effectiveness of the Chemistry Computational Thinking (CT-CHEM) Module on achievement in chemistry. This study also employed a quasi-experimental design with the participation of 85 form four students in Malaysia. The three types of teaching approaches, namely CT-CHEM Module Plugged-in (CTMP), CT-CHEM Module Unplugged + Plugged-in (CTMUP) and conventional method (CM), were systematically designed and implemented. The achievement of students was measured using an achievement test, where validity and reliability were justified and two-way ANCOVA was used to analyse the data. Findings confirmed that the achievement of students in chemistry is significantly higher in the CTMP group as compared with the CTMUP and CM groups. Instead, gender had no significant effect on students’ chemistry achievement. This study concludes that when students were exposed to teaching and learning strategies by integrated CT through plugged-in strategy more effective than a combination of plugged-in and unplugged. Plugged-in visualisation activities are more effective in increasing the understanding and achievement of students compared with the combination of plugged-in and unplugged activities. Plugged-in through visualisation activities is more effective than the combination of plugged-in and unplugged. This is because, the abstract concept in electrochemistry is easier to understand by students through the visualisation activity approach using a computer in explaining the important concepts in the topic and because the whole content is interrelated.”

Author Keywords

Computational thinking, plugged-in, unplugged, problem solving, chemistry learning

My One Sentence Summary

This quasi-experimental study investigated achievement outcomes between a chemistry unit in three groups: 1) chemistry classes integrated with Scratch projects, 2) chemistry classes integrated with both unplugged and Scratch projects, and 3) chemistry classes with no focus on computational thinking.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

Was PBL the reason why the plugged-in group scored higher?
What would we find if we investigated the impact on interest to further study the subject area?
How would the findings change with different chemistry units?
- What about different subject areas?
Why do you think a combination of plugged-in and unplugged activities scored lower than plugged-in only?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcasts that are relevant to this episode
- A Revaluation of Computational Thinking in K–12 Education: Moving Toward Computational Literacies
  - In this episode I unpack Kafai and Proctor’s (2021) publication titled “A revaluation of computational thinking in K–12 education: Moving toward computational literacies,” which summarizes three key framings of computational thinking and proposes computational literacies in place of computational thinking.
- CS Unplugged or Coding Classes?
  - In this episode I unpack Bell’s (2021) publication titled “CS unplugged or coding classes? Perhaps a more appropriate question is ‘why not both’?,” which argues there’s value in doing both unplugged and coding lessons.
- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
  - In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
- Situated Language and Learning with Bryan Brown
  - In this interview Bryan Brown, we discuss the importance of language in education. In particular, we discuss the role of language in teaching and learning, discursive identity, situated language and learning, the importance of representation in education, the role of language on stress, how smartphones and virtual communication platforms (e.g., Zoom) could change learning, and many other topics relevant to CS education and learning.
- Even more computational thinking episodes
- Even more episodes on Scratch
- Even more episodes that discuss situated language and learning
- All other episodes
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter