An exploratory study of augmented embodiment for computational thinking

The contiguity of physical and digital content of embodied learning has been shown to increase student's engagement in educational contexts. Applications with various kinds of physical interactions have been deployed to enhance the learning experiences in many engineering domains. However, even though computer science education (CSE) is one of zestful topics in the recent years, there are few studies focusing on the embodiment of CSE materials, by which the abstract and intangible concepts could be transformed into an intuitive affordance that utilizes sensorimotor experiences during the learning process. We propose an augmented embodiment mobile app designed for computational thinking (CT), specifically the debugging practices and abstraction concept, that makes use of gestures and augmented reality for learners to interact with the content. We examine the logic by the design framework for embodied learning and discuss potential extensions of multimodal analytics in such an application. Our preliminary user study in a middle school shows students' engagement in the application, however, it also reflected several design issues that need to be solved in the next iteration. The future plan of data analysis and experiments is also discussed.