Let's Play! - Music Improvisation as a Medium to Facilitate Computational Thinking

The current curricular changes across Europe towards the inclusion of computational thinking through coding in comprehensive schools have prompted new challenges for teachers that may not be confident nor have a scripted pedagogy to teach the core concepts, as well as for students that may have a negative bias towards such subjects. In this poster, we present our exploratory experiences using music improvisation as facilitation medium for presenting computational concepts to students, through a relaxed and anxiety-free atmosphere. We show the results of preliminary experiments in the wild, indicating that the emotional state of the participants is positively enhanced after a short section of music improvisation. Furthermore, we pose open questions to the CSE research community on the value of including short improvisation activities prior teaching programming concepts such as data, sequence, loops and conditionals, which are, oftentimes, perceived as difficult.