Making construals as a new digital skill: dissolving the program - and the programmer – interface (Meurig Beynon) Interactive Technologies and Games (ITAG) Conference 2015 Health, Disability and EducationDates: Thursday 22 October 2015 - Friday 23 October 2015 Location: The Council House, NG1 2DT

1. Making construals as
a new digital skill:
Dissolving the program - and the
programmer - interface

2. 2
CONSTRUIT!
• Meurig Beynon
• Jonny Foss
• Elizabeth Hudnott
• Steve Russ
• Chris Hall
… and the other members of the CONSTRUIT! team
construit.org

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Key concerns
• Supporting constructionism – learners as
teachers and developers
• Enabling adaptation of open educational
resources by teachers and learners
• Blurring the distinction between players and
developers in computer games (“mods”)

4. 4
Making construals
In making
a construal
Construal
Referent
Understanding
Context
co-evolve

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Construal/Program
A program has an abstract functionality …
… a construal offers interactive experience
A program has a formal semantics …
… a construal expresses informal meanings
The meaning is in the connection with the world
cf. the examinations spreadsheet …

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Semantics
Lucy
Fred
Bret
8
5
7
7
4
6
7
86
Art RE PE Ave
7.0
5.3
6.0
• Cell as MARK
• Column as SUBJECT
‘dependencies’‘observables’
Who can change what, when?
Known/expected effects
Fluent connection

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Observables
Student identities
Marks in subjects
Average for student
Spreadsheet Row
Spreadsheet Column
Spreadsheet Cell
Counterparts of observables ‘making a connection in experience’

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Constitution …
• observables: entities to which we can
attribute an identity and a current value
• dependencies amongst observables: changing
the value of one observable in one and the
same action changes the value of another
• the agency that acts upon them: human or
machine actions deemed to be responsible for
changing the values of observables

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Shopping construal

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Shopping examples
Observables and dependencies
the items for sale, the items selected for
purchase, the coins being offered and the
coins that remain in the purse … visually
represented on the canvas
the total cost of the items in the basket, and
how much money has been offered … defined
by dependency, no visual counterparts

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Shopping examples
Agents and agency
customer can select coins and select items
teacher can change prices or purse content
automated oracle can generate random coins
maker can introduce and refine definitions:
× haveenoughmoney is totalcost < spendingmoney; ×
Every agent action is (re)definition of observables

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Dissolve interfaces
Redefinition via Input Window for all in principle
… but can craft an interface for learner in canvas
Teacher can identify and correct simple errors
haveenoughmoney is totalcost <= spendingmoney;
Supporting the maker role …
dissolving the ‘program interface’ and the
interface to the programmer

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Inspecting a script
AN ACTION
SCRIPT EXTRACT
A DEFINITION
A FUNCTION

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Exploit construals
To derive educational resources from construals:
• conceive the transformation of the existing
observables
• identify the names of the relevant observables
• reconfigure the observables, definitions and
agency
Live demonstration with Shopping construal at
jseden.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/construit

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Scaffolding learning
Building on the
basic Shopping
Construal …

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A Shopping game
As derived from the basic
Shopping construal by a
process of conception,
identification and
reconfiguration intended
to be accessible to a
computing non-specialist

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More re construals
How do you
think it works?
... and how we
think IT works
For more info, contact Meurig Beynon:
wmb@dcs.warwick.ac.uk and attend the
CONSTRUIT! workshop tomorrow 11-12:

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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to:
Tim Monks, Nick Pope, Ant Harfield, Joe Butler
for their work on developing JS-EDEN
Mike Joy as the Coordinator for CONSTRUIT!

19. Thank you
Any questions?