Title: 2021 AERA
Date: 2021-04-01
template: slides

.title[
## UNFOLD STUDIO: SUPPORTING CRITICAL LITERACIES OF TEXT AND CODE
]

Chris Proctor 
April 1, 2021

.refs[
chrisproctor.net/slides/2021-aera.html 
Illustrations by Chris Proctor, based on fieldnotes and video
]

???

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# Outline

Conceptual framework
- Critical computational literacies
- Interactive storytelling

Study: Literacy participation and CS learning

CS and multilingual youth
- Teaching across literacies
- New forms of assessment
- Language ideologies

]]]

---
# From computational thinking to computational literacies

- Three framings of computational thinking.cite[1]
- Computational thinking as a map of the borderlands
- Literacies (multi-.cite[2], trans-.cite[3], syncretic.cite[4]) more
  effectively center dialogue across levels and questions of power and privilege

.refs[
 .anchor[1] Kafai, Proctor, & Lui (2019) .anchor[2] New London Group (1996)
.anchor[3] Stornaiuolo, Smith, & Phillips (2017) .anchor[4] Gutiérrez (2014)
]

???
Note some of the people on this panel
My own background in E/LA and CS

What kind of literacy I'm not discussing: early-childhood developemental
literacy, grounded in psychology, literacy-before-fluency

---
## Critical computational literacies

.refs[
Freire & Madedo (1987), Ivanič (1998), diSessa (2001), Holland, Lachicotte,
Skinner, & Cain (2001), Wertsch (2009), Lee & Garcia (2014), Vee (2017)
]

???

This diagram is my attempt to bring together conceptions of literacy from the
learning sciences and from the field of new literacies. At the top you can see
practices at the cognitive, the situated, and the critical scales. One axis of
literacy is radial. We can ask questions about literacy practices at and across different scales.

Literacy is about communities of practice reading and writing texts, broadly understood. It's about symbolic systems.
Different infrastructural technologies--books, Twitter, the law--have different
possibilities for practice at each scale. So a second axis is the relationship
between infrastructure and practice.

I want to show you three ways this construct can be useful.

First, I want to argue that literacy is a meta-construct that can encourage
interdisciplinary theoretical dialogue between different research projects. 
Computer scientists have been dreaming for seventy years
of creating comptuer cultures. Well now the computers are everywhere and we a computer
culture, but it is neither inclusive nor just. Various projects described as
"computational thinking" have tried to promote various cultural practices by
learning how computers work. We organized these into three framings of
computational thinking, and suggested litearcy might be a more effective
controlling metaphor.

Design space

---
# Modes of criticality

- Culturally-sustaining pedagogy.cite[1]
- Identity authorship and voice.cite[3]
- Critical discourse models.cite[2]

.refs[
 .anchor[1] Paris (2012) .anchor[2] Proctor & Blikstein (2019); Vossoughi
(2014); Fairclough (2004); Wortham (2001) .anchor[3] Proctor & Garcia (2020); 
Ivanič (1998); Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain (2001)
]

???
- Literacy places.cite[1] are figured worlds, “socially and culturally constructed realms of interpretation.”.cite[2], a cultural runtime environment
- Identity is who you are as a participant in a literacy place. The identities we author are constrained by existing subject positions..cite[2]
- Voice is how you speak in a literacy place. The voices we channel.cite[3] are constrained by existing genres..cite[4]

Identity is who you are as a participant in a literacy place. The identities we
author are constrained by existing subject positions. I am interested in the
ways we can transform subject positions to make room for new identities.

Voice is how you speak in a literacy place. The voices we channel are constrained by existing genres.
I am interested in the ways we can transform genres to make room for new voices.

Drawing on Vossoughi's social analytic artifacts, Fairclough's analysis of
critical discourse, and Wortham's interactive positioning

---
### Design: Unfold Studio

Web application for interactive storytelling using Ink.cite[1] programming language and social media affordances.

Design goals: support critical computational literacies, connect across
literacies.

Workshops at Computer Science Teachers Association, MozFest, Philly National Writing Project. Used in 6 states, internationally; nearly 10k student-authored stories

.refs[
.anchor[1] Inkle (2016)
]

???
A third use of "critical computational literacies" is as a framework for design.
We can cultivate new literacy practices by designing new media infrastructure.
This is what I have been trying to do with Unfold Studio, a web application for 
interactive storytelling which you briefly experienced when you RSVP'ed for this
talk.

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???
In Unfold Studio, users can write interactive stories in a programming language
called Ink. They enact choose-your-own-adventure-style games,
which you can see running on the right. Users of Unfold Studio can write and
share stories, follow users, and keep up with their community via a social feed.

Here is a story written by a student in the study. Note the three framings of
practice. To write this story, Isiah had to know how to use...

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## Does literacy participation support computer science learning?

1. Is participation in interactive story-based literacy associated with computer science learning?
 - Authorship? 
 - Audience?
2. If so, is this association mediated by individual student practice in writing their own stories?
]]
.half-right[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_0.png">]
]

???
With this context, I would like to share with you a particular research study.
Late-state design-based research tends to move more toward an emphasis on
instumentation and research efficiency (CITE Schwartz...)

I'm focused on two research questions here: 
1. Is participation in interactive story-based literacy associated with computer science learning?
2. If so, is this association mediated by individual student practice in writing their own stories?

---
## Data source: CS learning

Interactive story portfolio submission, assessed using a rubric aligned with K-12 CS Framework's
.cite[1] Control and Variables concepts.

.rubric[
Level | Control criteria | Variable criteria
----- | ------------- | --------------
Advanced (4 points) | Meets criteria for Proficient AND use of control adds meaning to the story. Uses an advanced control structure. | Meets criteria for Proficient AND use of state adds meaning to the story. Uses at least one declared variable.
Proficient (3 points) | Uses diverts correctly and meaningfully to control story execution. | Uses variables (either built-in or declared) to keep track of something in the story and using it to change what happens in the future.
Basic (2 points) | The use of control might be based closely on another story. The use of control might “check the boxes” but not have much effect on the story. May include minor errors in usage. | The use of state might be based closely on another story. The use of state might “check the boxes” but not have much effect on the story. May include minor errors in usage.
Below basic (1 point) | Does not meet criteria for Basic. | Does not meet criteria for Basic.
]

.refs[
.anchor[1] *K-12 CS Framework* (2016)
]

???
Don't need to read the whole table. But this is what I used to assess students'
summative performance. Students were familiar with the rubric; we worked with it
in class.

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## Data Source: Literacy participation

500k events from Unfold Studio log

Build literacy graph: interactions between users and stories

Author score: Number of other user interactions with a user's stories

Audience score: Number of interactions with other users' stories

]]]

???
We operationalize literacy events as actions taken by users in the process of reading and writing stories, as well as browsing, searching, following other users, and commenting on stories. In this study, we consider only those literacy events in which one user views, loves, or forks (makes a copy of) another user’s story. These interactions feature two important, reciprocally-connected roles, those of author and audience. As described in the background, we view these as important learning opportunities within a literacy place grounded in, but extending beyond, the classroom. Each literacy event can be considered as a link in a bipartite network of authors and stories. We define a user’s author score as the number of literacy events in which another user interacted with one of the user’s stories. Similarly, a user’s audience score is the number of literacy events in which that user interacted with a story written by another user. Figure 2 shows a histogram of participants’ author and audience scores.

Thirty of the fifty study participants have author scores of zero because they chose not to make any of their stories publicly visible to their peers. (While this group wrote fewer stories on average than authors with positive author scores, they still wrote an average of 8 stories, including stories for the summative portfolio.) Note that the sums of all author and audience scores are not equal because these scores consider interactions with all "Literacy App" users. Some participants wrote stories which became popular on the site beyond the classes involved in this study, and they were occasionally inspired by stories written by external authors. For example, a student at another school wrote a story in which the player walks through an imagined monument to LGBTQ heroes from history. Several students pointed this story out as they were planning their own writing.

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## Data source: Stories
<img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/state_flow_hist_vertical_a.png" style="margin-top: -24px;">
]]
.half-right[<img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/unfold_zdev_code_focus_a.png" style="margin-top: 36px;">]
]

???
Finally, we consider the content of students’ interactive stories, which are the primary artifacts created on "Literacy App". Over the course of the unit, the 48 authors participating in the research wrote 640 stories. In this study, we conduct static program analysis of the code from the final state of each story. (The left half of Figure 1 shows an excerpt of a story’s code.) Following a common strategy of counting syntactic elements which map to concepts (e.g. Brennan & Resnick, 2012; Fields, et al., 2016), we count the use of syntactic elements which correspond to flow and state, the two primary content knowledge goals of the unit.

We chose to count the number of diverts in each story as a measure of practicing flow. An interactive story can be visualized as a directed graph, where each knot, or chunk of textual content, is connected to other knots by edges. Each divert (->) implements an edge, so the number of diverts in a story corresponds to the number of edges in its story graph. We defined a students' flow practice score as the logarithm of the maximum number of diverts in any of an author’s stories. (Using the sum across an author’s stories would be artificially inflated when authors repeatedly forked their own stories, and using an average would be artificially deflated for authors who made numerous throwaway stories for notes or to test out constructs.). We conducted a similar analysis for stories' use of state which will be reported in a subsequent publication.

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## Data source: Stories
<img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/state_flow_hist_vertical_b.png" style="margin-top: -24px;">
]]
.half-right[<img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/unfold_zdev_code_focus_b.png" style="margin-top: 36px;">]
]

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## Authorship and CS learning Controlling for prior interest .cite[1]

.caption-bottom-left[
\*p < 0.1 
\*\*p < 0.05 
\*\*\*p < 0.01 
]

.refs[
.anchor[1] Friend (2015)
]

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## Audience and CS learning Controlling for prior interest .cite[1]

.refs[
.anchor[1] Friend (2015)
]

???
Supports the hypothesis that a literacy-based approach to introductory Computer
Science can be an effective learning environment. Part of a larger argument that
this can also support criticality.
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# CS and Multilingual Youth
]

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## Teaching across literacies

???
"Maybe I'm projecting, but I feel like they aren't recognizing that their little piece of the world is worth telling about."
Performance in the classroom

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# New forms of assessment

.refs[
Reader-response analysis (Rosenblatt, 1968)
]

---
# Technological language ideologies

- Language ideologies.cite[1] assert associations between marked aspects of
  speech and characteristics of speakers
- Interfaces enact ideologies.cite[2]
- Example: Unicode in Unfold Studio

.refs[
.anchor[1] Rosa & Burdick (2016) .anchor[2] Proctor (2021)
]

---

.title[
## UNFOLD STUDIO: SUPPORTING CRITICAL LITERACIES OF TEXT AND CODE
]

Chris Proctor 
April 1, 2021

.refs[
chrisproctor.net/slides/2021-aera.html 
Illustrations by Chris Proctor, based on fieldnotes and video
]