Congrats Urs!Today, Urs Hauser, under the supervision of Elsbeth Stern and myself, defended his doctoral thesis on transfer effects of programming education in high school. In a beautifully designed study involving almost 40 Swiss high school classes (and around 750 students), Urs investigated whether any transfer effects would register with respect to computational thinking, spatial abilities, or complex problem solving skills when programming with Turtle graphics or educational robotics. 
His findings provide evidence that indeed transfer skills do manifest quite clearly with respect to computational thinking skills and spatial abilities, and in particular that physical computing leads to larger effects for female novices than for their male colleagues. The latter hypothesis is something you will hear quite often from teachers that taught with robots (including myself). Yet, there is (with some exceptions) mostly annecdotal evidence, and I am not aware another study that provides such strong support. Further Reading |