Auburn University
- Contributed by Dr. Daniela Marghitu, marghda@auburn.edu
- Contributed by Dr. Nancy Barry, nhb0002@auburn.edu
- Contributed by Fatemeh Jamshidi fzj0007@auburn.edu
Name of the program: Mentoring Alabama Girls in Computing and Music (MAGIC + M)
Institutional and departmental context
- Location: Auburn University (AU), Auburn, AL, USA
- Student body size: Total undergraduate enrollment of 24,628
- Degree(s) offered: AU offers more than 150 formal undergraduate and graduate majors in Undergraduate, Master and Ph.D. levels.
- Department/major name:
- Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE)
- Department of Curriculum and Teaching (College of Education)
- Number of contributing faculty: 2 Faculty members
- Number of majors annually: AU offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate majors, which are housed in 12 colleges and schools.
Institutional Mission
As a land-grant institution, AU is dedicated to improving the lives of the people of Alabama, the nation, and the world through forward-thinking education, life-enhancing research and scholarship, and selfless service.
Culture, Curriculum, or Strategic Plans
Many programs have aimed to increase awareness about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education for
female students across the globe, such as the Cybergirlz and Cyberhigh initiatives [1]. In our efforts to attract
underrepresented female students towards future careers in Computer Science (CS) and Music, we developed the MAGIC + M
program - a curriculum combining music, CS, and robotics. In the context of this project, we believe that Perfomatics [2]
is a potential area which may attract students to CS. The main steps of the curriculum are: (1) Introducing students to CS
concepts and skills using Scratch music-related games [3] Introducing students to music-based story telling.
(2) Teaching basics of music programming using EarSketch, figure 1 [4].
(3) Introducing social robots and the features of semi- humanoid PEPPER robot shown in figure 2 [5].
(4) Teaching how to synchronize their social PEPPER robot with their musical composition.
(5) Providing an opportunity for student presentations in a dancing robot competition.
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| Figure 1:The EarSketch web-based learning environment. |
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| Figure 2: PEPPER Robot. |
- We will recruit 20 middle school and 20 high school female students from low Supplemental Educational Services (SES) public schools across Alabama. The summary of our lesson plan is outlined in Tables 1, 2.
Table 1: MAGIC +M Computing Module Lesson Plan Outline
| Section | Learning Objective: Students will . . . |
|---|---|
| Demonstrate PEPPER’s reaction to music | Explore and interact with the technology |
| Introduce robotics | Gain basic understanding of robotics |
| Introduce PEPPER robot | Understand what exactly the PEPPER can do |
| Illustrate PEPPER programming | Understand the steps required to program the PEPPER using blocked programming based functional coding |
| Hands-on coding activity and dance routine | Get familiar with coding a PEPPER and learn to test the routine and see how the commands on the synchronizing the PEPPER dancing robotic with students’ musical composition. |
Table 2: MAGIC +M Music Module Lesson Plan Outline
| Section | Learning Objective: Students will . . . |
|---|---|
| Demonstrate creativity in using music in other fields. | Explore basic concepts of rhythm and generating a musical composition. |
| Introduce EarSketch | Understand the concept of making music beats in EarSketch |
| Introduce digital music instrument (piano keyboard) | Understand how to instantiate objects and call their methods from the Python class Library as well as third party libraries (e.g. their own pre-defined library to read the input from the digital music instruments). |
| Illustrate main piano octave. | Compose a simple piece using the first five notes of the C Major scale. |
- Appropriate assessments for each learning objective are based upon previous research including AU pilot programs beginning in 2016. Previous publications on EarSketch indicate increased creativity from four perspectives: process, person, place, and product [6, 7, 8, 9]. We plan to run a path analysis for creativity subscales. Pre-post survey and knowledge tests were developed to assess each stated objective. We developed an attitude survey based on [10] measuring confidence, enjoyment, importance, motivation, identity, intent to persist, personal creativity, and authenticity. The Student Engagement Survey includes subscales from the CS Attitude Survey (CSAS) [11] and adapts items from Knezek & Christensen [12] to measure identity/belongingness. Additionally, AU CSSE and music education teams, developed a 20- item language agnostic computing-music content knowledge assessment to assess gains in programming content knowledge and music concepts.
Relevant historical circumstances
Females of all ethnicities are under-represented in STEM areas, but the equity gap is even greater for females of color. Therefore, this project aims to provide a thickly authentic learning environment for females of color and underrepresented females to increase their creativity and interest to persist in STEAM (STEM + Arts) related fields.
Goals for interdisciplinarity, broaadening participation, etc
This collaboration between our CSSE and Music Education program represents an innovative approach employing two-way integration of computing and music (STEAM) as opposed to previous approaches that merely used music as a tool for learning in STEM areas. This curriculum is based on content standards for both science and music.
Unusual opportunties
- This program represents a unique collaboration between CS and Music Education, to assure the highest quality of this interdisciplinary K12 research and outreach program.
- We maintain a low student to teacher ratio to ensure excellent supervision and guidance throughout the program.
- In MAGIC + M camp, these disadvantaged students will have access to a computer lab, MIDI keywords, 10 world renowned semi-humanoid PEPPER robots, and other state-of-the art hardware and software.
Curricular overview
Non-major program (elective summer day camp)
The following is a general outline of scheduled topics:
- Day 1:
- Morning: Social robots (PEPPER). Students will perform an “artificial intelligence” game learning how different elements of a social dancing robot work together.
- Afternoon: Music beats and defining variables for beats in EarSketch.
- Day 2:
- Morning: CS concepts such as looping, conditions, and functions using the correlation between music and CS.
- Afternoon: Review beats. Introduce music basic notes using MIDI keyboard and Flowkey [13].
- Day 3:
- Morning: Basic syntax of programming in EarSketch. Composing songs for dancing robots and synchronizing with PEPPER.
- Afternoon: Review music notes and self-practice using MIDI keyboard and Flowkey.
- Day 4:
- Morning: Workday. Making beats and further functions in Ear Sketch.
- Afternoon: Students choose a simple melody and add filters using EarSketch.
• Day 5:
- Graduation.
- Dancing robot competition. Students may invite family to join this celebration.
Key contributions
MAGIC, a free one-week summer STEAM camp was launched at AU in 2016. MAGIC aims to attract more underrepresented populations in CS by prioritizing personal expression, creativity, and aesthetics. In summer 2018 we added music resources to allow students enjoy learning CS concepts through music remixing. EarSketch, a collaborative and authentic learning tool, introduces students to programming through music remixing, has previously been shown to increase student engagement, and increases learner’s intentions to persist in computing.
Researches have been demonstrated the use of the social robot as a tool for STEAM education by creating live theatre using multiple robots as actors, where students experience playing with robots and brainstorm ideas on the story and roles of the robots [17, 18]. As a new aspect of MAGIC camp in Summer 2020, we will introduce the semi-humanoid robot Pepper that can communicate in different modalities. MAGIC camp utilizes the idea of designing a social robot to improve student’s critical thinking and creativity.
Limitations/challenges
Due to the one-week time limitation, it is not feasible to teach all concepts of designing a social dancing robot and music theory at MAGIC + M camp. Therefore, the main focus is on empowering these young females in STEAM through creative robotics and music activities.
References:
[1] C. Outlay, P. Ambrose, and J. Chenoweth, “Overcoming gender stereotype entry barriers to computing degree programs: the cybergirlz program experience,” Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, vol. 28, pp. 33–38, 2006.
[2] A. Ruthmann, J. M. Heines, G. R. Greher, P. Laidler, and C. Saulters II, “Teaching computational thinking through musical live coding in scratch,” in Proc. of the 41th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2010, pp. 351–355.
[3] MIT Scratch Homepage, https://scratch.mit.edu/, last accessed 2019/12/28.
[4] EarSketch, https://earsketch.gatech.edu/earsketch2/
[5] SoftBank Robotics, https://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/pepper
[6] Engelman, S., Magerko, B., McKlin, T., Miller, M., Edwards, D., & Freeman, J. (2017). Creativity in Authentic STEAM Education with EarSketch (pp. 183– 188). ACM Press. \https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017763
[7] Amabile, T.M. 1990. Within you, without you: The social psychology of creativity and beyond. In Theories of Creativity, M.A. Runco and R.S. Albert. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 61-90.
[8] Rogers, C. 1976. Toward a Theory of Creativity. In The Creativity Question, Rothenberg, A. and Hausman. C.R. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
[9] Mayer, R.E. 1999. Fifty years of Creativity Research. In Handbook of Creativity, R.J. Sternberg. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 449- 460. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807916.024
[10] Tom McKlin, Brian Magerko, Jason Freeman, “ Authenticity and Personal Creativity: How EarSketch Affects Student Persistence” , Computer Science Published in SIGCSE ‘18 2018 DOI:10.1145/3159450.3159523
[11] Wiebe, E., Williams, L., Yang, K., and Miller, C. 2003. Computer science attitude survey. Comput. Scie. 14.
[12] Knezek, G. and Christensen, R. 1996. Validating the Computer Attitude Questionnaire (CAQ). Presented at Annual Meeting of the Southwest Education Research Association (New Orleans, Louisiana, January 26, 1996). AMSERA’96.
[13] learn piano with the song you love, https://www.flowkey.com/en.
[14] Carlos N. Silla Jr., Andr ́e L. Przybysz, Andriano Rivolli, Thayna Gimenez, Carolina Barroso, Jessika Machado, “Girls, Music and Computer Science”
[15] Carlos N. Silla Jr., Andr ́e L. Przybysz, and Wellington V. Leal, “Music Education Meets Computer Science and Engineering Education”
[16] B. Taylor, J. Allison, Y. Oh, D. Holmes, and W. Conlin. “Simplified Expressive Mobile Development with NexusUI, NexusUp and NexusDrop”. In Proceedings of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference, 2014.
[17] M. Jeon, M. Fakhrhosseini, J. Barnes, Z. Duford, R. ts -Robot Interact., no. 1, pp. 445446, 2016.
[18] J. Barnes, M. FakhrHosseini, E. Vasey, Z. Duford, J. - the Companion of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - 404404.