Application of the MEMA method in the development of computational thinking

There is a general opinion that all or at least the majority of young people today are proficient in new technologies. Expressions like digital natives and digital immigrants are used, assuming that the use of new technologies does not present any problem to young people, while the elderly, in this new technology world, are like immigrants in an unknown country [1]. Unfortunately, as far as young people are concerned, this is quite far from the truth [4]. In fact, most of them handle their mobile phones and tablets quite skilfully so that they can communicate with each other, listen to music, play games, record and send videos, but problems arise if they need to create some new software. Students regularly have problems acquiring knowledge and skills related to programming. Every teacher who teaches programming in any language to any age group has encountered this problem. The reason for non-acceptance is that programming requires a special art of thinking, which is commonly called computational thinking.

Of course, the computer does not think, but executes commands, as they are given to it. Complicated systems sometimes act as if they were rational beings, although of course they are not. They are machines after all, although sometimes they leave a different impression on the user. With more and more detailed instructions that predict more and more complicated situations, the systems are becoming more and more perfect, so we are talking about artificial intelligence. But in the end, a machine is a machine, and a human is a human [2]. A language that can be understood by a machine can be one of the programming languages ​​of which there are many today, and several dozen are most often mentioned. Deciding which programming language to teach in school is an example of a question that provokes discussion among IT experts, educators, parents and others. The answer to that question raises a number of other questions, for example, the question about equipment, the price of equipment, technological obsolescence, prior knowledge of lecturers, permanent education, additional burden of children with new material, to name just a few of the main ones.

When and how to start

When to start learning programming? The answer is: as soon as possible. With the appearance of the first computers and their use in various fields of human activity, it was not uncommon for people to start learning about programming after finishing formal schooling. Companies employed programmers who did not know how to program at all, but after having them employed, the companies would train them in various types of courses. This was a completely normal practice at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. Before being employed, the candidates did pass some tests. This tests were intelligence tests and tests of aptitude for logical thinking, which later got the name of ‘computational thinking’. So the tendency to think like that can be the result of the talent of an individual, who can then master programming faster than others. This also applies to other areas, so a person with good hearing and a talent for music learns to play an instrument faster and better than others, a person who is fit and has a talent for sports plays soccer better, and a person with a talent for literature learns the art of creative writing faster. But in addition to the gift for learning and developing any talents, the age when a person becomes familiar with a skill is also important. For most areas, the rule is the same: the sooner the better. Does this also apply to programming? There is no reason for programming to be an exception [6]. The only question is how to conduct that first meeting of a child and programming.Until now, there have been many different approaches and there are several programs that were developed especially for the first meeting of students and the world of programming. If one of the existing programming languages ​​is used for this first meeting of the child and programming, all the mentioned problems are waiting to be solved. The school must be equipped with hardware and software, the teachers must be trained to use exactly that software on that hardware, and the students will additionally study that new material, in addition to other material that they already have to learn.The MEMA method is an approach to the first steps in programming that avoids almost all of these problems or at least mitigates them. It requires neither hardware nor software, classes in the lower grades of elementary school can be taught by teachers regardless of whether or not they know how to program in any of the existing programming languages, and the advantage is that they are educated to work with small children and know how they should be treated. Children learn to program with minimal additional effort, because along the way they revise what they learn at school anyway, for example, in the first grade, how to add and subtract natural numbers up to 20 [7], in the second grade, they revise the multiplication table [8] , and in the third and fourth grades they practice reading comprehension and tasks more complex mathematically [12].There are several main problems with the user’s first encounter with programming. When teaching programming, it is necessary to transfer knowledge about the individual commands the program is built of. These commands, each of them, are mostly quite simple, so they are mostly passed quite quickly, and in the meantime you learn a lot of other facts that require understanding. For example, the fact that there are variables used in commands, that they have their own address and content, that in some languages we have to declare them, that there are different kinds of them, that there are also constants, that in addition to the syntax of the command the order of the command is also important. And suddenly the students find themselves facing a multitude of new terms, which are mutually dependent, and which they simply do not manage to use correctly.Using the MEMA method, just the slow and gradual approach, is the advantage. In the first grade, children become familiar with letters of the alphabet and numbers up to twenty. They use the letters to read the first words and sentences, they use the numbers for addition and subtraction up to twenty. This is the right moment to introduce the commands for input, output and processing and use them for the first programs. While learning about programming children revise addition and subtraction, which they usually do in the first grade. They play impersonating a computer and a user, and while acting the roles of INPUT, OUTPUT and PROCESSING they, at the same time, learn to understand how a computer works. They slowly acquire the knowledge that some numbers (data) can be used as variables and that there are constants that can be used together with variables in commands. Variables can be saved in some places and used from there if needed. While learning these facts about programs the child constantly revises the educational material which children have to master in the first grade anyway, which is addition and subtraction up to 20. As a memory tool, the children use the MEMA toy [5], which they make themselves in the school lesson out of empty boxes in which they store the necessary numbers. The teachers may or may not have prior knowledge of programming, but they certainly know the children they teach to very well and they realise what the children’s current capabilities are and what workload they currently face. The MEMA method offers the teachers in the first grade detailed instructions on how to methodically process certain contents [10], what questions they can expect from the children and what answers they should provide them with. Prof. Dr Vladimir Mužić wrote a review of the manual for teachers [10], and in reference to the MEMA method he wrote ‘The popular and age-appropriate way of presentation suggested to the teacher by the manuscript text is very well integrated into a high professional level, i.e., there is no unjustified simplification, which tends to be a constant danger in publications of such a scope and purpose. Also, in the opinion of the undersigned reviewer, the narrower set of commands presented here is well chosen from a larger set which, of course, cannot be included here due to the purpose and available teaching time’. What makes this part of the review especially interesting is the fact that the method shows to be as suitable for students and teachers today as it used to be when it was created in 1981.A lot has changed significantly in the world of IT in last forty years, many books have become obsolete, many approaches unpopular, and only few things have remained the same. A program is still a program, a command is still a command, a variable is still a variable, and an address is still an address… It seems that even forty years ago it was possible to separate and explain that small part of the art of programming, which is needed by everyone and appears in almost all languages ​​(Table 1). Table 1. Comparison of basic terms in programming languages and the MEMA method [9]

Using the MEMA method

The MEMA method has not been used as much as it deserves, so far, but when it was used it gave very good results. It was first used at the Nikola Tesla School in Rijeka in the class of teacher Maja Mulac sometime around 1980 [6]. Only the material for the first grade was used, the teacher used materials from the manuscript, which were published later [10]. A few years later, the students from that specific class and school surprised their computer science teacher because they adopted the material from the BASIC programming language significantly faster and easier than their peers without the MEMA experience. These results were described and presented at a scientific meeting in 1987 [6].The MEMA method was later recognized locally to a limited extent. As an activity of the Society of Cybernetics several courses were held in some schools, live and online. Two webinars were also held at the national level of Croatia. More about this can be found on the Society’s website [13]. These activities were carried out with the support of the city of Rijeka, Primorsko Goranska County and the Croatian Agency for Education. The teachers liked the method. Surveys among teachers and students of teacher training colleges gave very favourable results. However, the use of the method did not follow this positive evaluation.However, one teacher actually used the method in practice. The method was used for four years by teacher Divna Bjelanović from the Pećine school in Rijeka [9]. The results are stimulating and encouraging, and some new ideas have emerged. The main result that made the authors of this work especially happy was the acceptance of this ‘unplugged’ method by new generations. Not only children, but also their parents liked the method. At the first parents’ meeting on 6th September, 2018, the teacher presented the MEMA method [12] to the parents. The parents expressed their satisfaction with their children’s participation in this program. The teacher’s experience testifies that using the method, students’ motivation for learning in general is increased, and in addition, a positive attitude towards mathematics is created. The students’ most common reply to a question asked on various classroom occasions ‘What will we do in the first lesson?’ was: ‘Mathematics, but with MEMA!’. Therefore the fact that they worked without the use of a computer was neither a problem nor a disadvantage for anyone. Another encouraging result was that all the children in the class mastered the basic programming skills, i.e., they developed the understanding of how programs and individual commands work. It was also expected that the method could contribute to better results in mastering the mathematical skills of addition and subtraction. Here the results were even more surprisingly good. According to the teacher, mathematics became a favourite subject for that generation of students.

This project should primarily encourage better use of the method. It is a shame that a method that can provide so much is used so little. The modernized and supplemented MEMA method and teaching materials will be tested by hundreds of students and several dozen of their teachers, in three different schools from three different countries. The experience gained and the materials created, which will be available in four languages ​​(Croatian, Polish, Turkish and English), could encourage other schools to apply the method, which, as it turned out, is close and beneficial to both students and teachers.

Description of the method

During the development of the method, the following rules were observed: • It is learned gradually, step by step, with constant repetition of previously mastered educational material• Examples which the students feel familiar with are used. While teaching about programming, the educational material of other subjects is repeated and revised. This is the material that students of that age group learn anyway.• Tasks of different complexity are used to make the teaching material stimulating for all students• Students are encouraged to have a creative approach to the computer The method is recognizable by the toy that the children make themselves from empty matchboxes during classes at school. The toy will help them visualize the processes that are happening in the computer’s memory. The nine drawers of the toy are painted with nine colours. The author of the method called that toy MEMA [5] (Figure 1). Figure 1. MEMA – a toy that helps to understand how the main computer memory works The purpose of MEMA is to show the children what happens with the variables in the main computer memory while the program is running. None of the existing programming languages ​​is used. Instead, there is used a set of commands presented by drawings, which are first defined and then executed. Some command examples can be seen in Figure 2. Figure 2. Examples of commands assigned to drawings

If such commands are used in the MEMA method program, they would respectively mean: a) INPUT. Put as many beans as you want in the red drawer.b) OUTPUT. Write on the board (or in the notebook) how many beans there are currently in the red drawer (without removing the beans from the red drawer).

c) PROCESSING. Put as many beans as there are in the green drawer into the red drawer (without emptying the green drawer).

d) PROCESSING. Put as many beans as there are in the green and pink drawers together into the red drawer, without changing the contents of the green and pink drawers.

Using the commands the first programs can be written. A program is a series of commands that can be executed. Figure 3 shows a program that loads two numbers into memory, adds them and prints the result. Figure 3. The program loads and adds two numbers, and prints the result

Every student ‘executes the program’ using their own MEMA and a handful of beans. The child plays two roles: the role of the user and the role of the computer. The children (in the role of the user) decide how many beans to put into the green drawer and how many into the pink one, they count the beans and put them in the drawers. The numbers must not be too large because they must fit in the drawers, so that the ‘overflow’ does not occur. In the third command, the children (in the role of the computer) should put as many beans into the red drawer as they obtain after having added the numbers from the green and pink drawers. At the same time, the number of the beans in both green and pink drawers remains unchanged. The last command is the output command, where the child (in the role of the computer) executes the command by writing the contents of the red drawer on the board or in a notebook, of course without changing the contents of the red drawer. Each child can choose varied numbers as the input, and the outputs can be different. It is just one example of an addition program. Each child can choose different colours of the drawers at the entry point, it is only important that the drawers they choose later are consistently used in the program. The rules for this task are: · Add the two drawers which were filled on input,· At the exit, use the drawer in which the total was placed. We can see that for the same task there are many different correct solutions (and many incorrect ones, of course). In addition to the fact that the children master programming through the game, they also revise other content important for that age: they revise the names of colours, facts about numbers and addition.In upper grades of elementary school the teaching material is introduced in such a way that it follows other subjects and gradually adds elements of complexity. For all the four grades of primary school the teaching material is organized as follows: · First grade: Introducing MEMA, introducing commands INPUT, OUTPUT, PROCESSING, introducing variables (MEMA drawers), addressing drawers by colours, introducing constants, solving programming tasks at the level of recognition ‘What does this program do?’, importance of the order of commands in a program, testing the program, running the program with different input data, addition and subtraction up to 20, writing a program, My Computer game, programs of greater complexity, the same variable on both sides of the command.· Second grade: Repetition and revision of everything learned. Addressing a variable using the name of the variable, the content of the variable on the paper strip in the drawer, the multiplication table, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division up to 100, the Andor poem and the logical difference between the words AND and OR.· Third grade: Repetition and revision of everything learned. Testing a program for arithmetics with numbers above 100, problems with parentheses, jumping forward in a program, conditional jump, text variables and constants, writing a program to compare variables, writing a program to sort two numbers.· Fourth grade: Repetition and revision of everything learned. Conditional jump back in the program. The poem ‘Necklace’ and For to loop. The poem ‘Pool’ and Do until loop.

Expected results

Hypothesis 1. It is expected that by applying the MEMA method, all or at least a very large percentage (over 95%) of students will master the testing of programs of a complexity that is suitable for their age. Hypothesis 2. It is expected that by applying the MEMA method, a large percentage (over 80%) of students will master the writing of programs using commands defined in the MEMA method, based on a programming task given in words of complexity that is suitable for their age. Hypothesis 3. It is expected that by applying the MEMA method in each class, individuals who show a talent for programming will be recognized. Hypothesis 4. It is expected that by applying the MEMA method, all or at least a very large percentage (over 95%) of teachers will master teaching programming, regardless of their prior knowledge.

What can influence the MEMA method to be used more

As previously described, the MEMA method is an innovative method that prof. Ph.D. Marina Čičin Šain designed more than 43 years ago. The development of computational thinking and programming, as well as the connection of mathematics with the aforementioned in the education of students, is important and significant both in the previous period and today in the 21st century. First of all, in order for every teacher to be able to apply the MEMA method in their teaching, they must have certain knowledge, skills and abilities. However, the results of the practice showed that very few teachers applied the MEMA method in their work, despite the fact that a large number of educators had previously expressed a positive attitude towards the application of this method in the course of the teaching process. The above proves the need for discovering additional motivational factors that can influence the use of the MEMA method by teachers in different educational environments.If we start from the fact that the application of the MEMA method in teaching is an innovation, then according to Rogers [14] its acceptance by teachers can be connected to the process of the speed of the innovation’s spread over a certain period of time through a certain communication channel, where very important are the attributes of the MEMA and the social system. According to Rogers’ model Theory of Diffusion of Innovations [14], the users of innovations can make a decision to accept or reject the innovation by personal free choice, collectively or by command, followed by the stage of using the innovation in the environment. The last stage in the innovation acceptance process is the confirmation in which the user, under the influence of various factors, can make a decision on not accepting or accepting the innovation in the final stage. In the case when the decision to accept the innovation is a result of an imposed command, the acceptance of the innovation can still be at different levels. Thus, in this case too, it is necessary to motivate users to apply the innovation at higher levels.Rogers [14] defined the innovation adoption process as ‘an individual’s decision to fully utilize the available innovation in the best possible way’. Therefore, we can assume that the level of acceptance of the MEMA method in educational environments will largely depend on teachers and their motivation for the above. It is known, according to Deci and Ryan [15] and Vallerand [16], that individuals change their behaviour under the influence of various factors of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, but also under the factors of so-called “lack of motivation”. As an example, Davis [17] in the Technology Acceptance Model – TAM, which is one of the most frequently used models for explaining technology acceptance, starts from the claim that the use of technology can be explained by the motivation of users in the environment in which they are exposed to the actual use of it. According to the mentioned model, the actual use of technology is influenced by the user’s intention to use it, which is influenced by the user’s attitude towards its use, which, in turn, is influenced by two key beliefs: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.In literature, it is possible to find a large number of models that in many ways tried to discover the factors, starting from different aspects that influence the use of innovations by users. One example of connecting the model of acceptance of innovations and technology with models of competence in the educational environment for the purposes of understanding the factors that influence teachers’ motivation to use technology in teaching is a conceptual model developed by Babić [18, 19]. According to the mentioned model, there are the following significant categories of factors that encourage teachers to apply innovations in teaching: knowledge, skills and abilities of teachers, attitudes and values, situational factors, institutional factors and personal factors. Within the ‘situational factors’ category, the role of the student characteristics that can influence the use of innovation in the teaching process is emphasized. Practice has shown that the way students accept the MEMA method motivates teachers to design creative tasks using the MEMA method [9].Taking the above into consideration, it can be concluded that understanding the factors that will explain what can make the MEMA method to be used more by teachers in grades 1 to 4 is a very complex process that requires additional research.

Future research

After the modernization of the MEMA method and its application in selected primary school educational environments in Croatia, Poland and Turkey, it is necessary to: 1. confirm the effectiveness of the MEMA method in teaching to young students and2. motivate a greater number of teachers in grades 1-4 of primary schools to use the MEMA method, from local to global levels. In this regard, in order to confirm the effectiveness of the modernized MEMA method in teaching, it is necessary to investigate to what extent the students who have used the MEMA method prefer to learn mathematics and program better using programming languages ​​compared to those students who were not taught using the MEMA method. To meet the above, the research framework and the results of the pilot project of the original author of the MEMA method Čičin-Šain [6] will be used and supplemented.In the context of teachers’ motivation, it is necessary to investigate the factors that represent barriers to the use of the MEMA method in their teaching, whereby the conceptual model of technology acceptance in education developed by Babić [19] will be used as the basis for the research.It is expected that, according to the results of the aforementioned future research, it will be possible to design innovative models for the acceptance of the MEMA method by a larger number of teachers and to confirm the effectiveness of the MEMA method, which ultimately helps students in the development of computational thinking, programming and learning mathematics necessary for the development of STEM competencies needed by the labour market. References: