Analogies are powerful, ubiquitous tools that can help students learn abstract computing concepts. Instructors are often those who introduce analogies in the classroom; this work seeks to shift this paradigm to empower students to develop their own analogies to actively explore, connect, and learn computing concepts. Scaffolding is needed to ease the development process and optimize for positive learning outcomes. This study contributes to ongoing work to refine the analogy development process, specifically focusing on how students can effectively represent their analogies. This study uses a design-based research approach, with an iterative process that led to the continued refinement of analogy development scaffolding. This work provides insights about the initial diagrammatic representations and presents a comparative analysis of the two representation styles trialed so far. Insights from this study can be used to guide the development of more effective scaffolding for student-generated analogies. Through this work we aim to improve students’ conceptual understanding of computing concepts through analogy development.

Link to Presentation: https://youtu.be/fK_VuRWR2xI