Exploring the Relationship Between Collaborative Discourse, Programming Actions, and Cybersecurity and Computational Thinking Knowledge

Computational thinking (CT) skills are necessary for solving the real-world problems of today and are therefore being incorporated into K-12 curricula. Cybersecurity is of similar importance; however, it can be difficult for young learners to grasp the required concepts and use them to construct meaningful algorithms. We discuss our approach that combines a hands-on robotics platform with a block-based programming environment to facilitate the learning and application of cybersecurity and CT concepts. Throughout a week-long intervention, high school students were introduced to cybersecurity and CT and given the opportunity to apply this knowledge in a collaborative setting to solve security problems on the robotics platform with instructor and peer support. A series of competitions between groups of students further motivated students to translate their learned concepts to practice, often leading to breakthroughs as students incorporated new algorithms into their existing projects to counteract previous security flaws. We present evidence of the learning behaviors of several such groups through mixed-method case studies integrating data collected from learning performance, collaborative discourse, and analysis of program development. We discuss the impact of this approach on cybersecurity and CT learning and then present future directions for this work.