Aprendizagem conectada em modos de participação no Scratch: proposta de tipologia

Abstract

Learning what seems relevant to the academic formation deserves the constant scientific investigation for the world we live in. Today, communication technologies are a part of the personal and professional lives of adults and youth in ways never seen before. The formal education environment, on the other hand, doesn’t look into the same technologies as allies to the classroom learning, and so many times builds a wall between communication tools that students love to use and their scholar curriculum. Considering the necessity of discussion on learning in informal environments, this thesis was made with the goal of bringing to the surface, using educational studies for this context, a learning model for discussions in online forums. To accomplish that, we present the case of Scratch, a tool used for the creation of projects through blocks language, from computer science. Using Scratch’s online discussion forums, we collected data from its participants’ conversations, and visualized the data using Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools to see these groups’ content and members as a network. Our research corpus consists of data from eight (8) online forums, collected in two moments: August and September 2015; and again in August and September of 2016. Later, we did the data analysis: first the network one, highlighting who were the most influential participants in the forums and what roles they have played on it; and then, by the content analysis, it was possible for us to understand the subjects that users talked about most, and also to see the frequency of word pairs appeared in the discussions. As a contribution to the first two analyses, we’ve clipped 20 messages found in our corpus data as a complement to the understanding of data context. Finally, we based our thesis on the Connected Learning theories (ITO ET AL, 2013) to point in the results what can be like this considered in the actors relations. Composing the final purpose of this research, we propose the connected learning model in Scratch, creating a typology for its members’ ways of participation. In the end, we suggest new ways of participation that might be applied to Scratch or other communities so it can direct its members’ activities to a learning model based on social interactions.