Publications in VIVO

Co-author Network

Repenning, Alexander

Professor Adjunct

Positions

Professor Adjunct, Computer Science

Research Areas

Research

research overview

Repenning is leading a large Computer Science Project in Switzerland. Dr. Repenning's goal is to bring computer science education to public schools. He has developed computational thinking tools and a computer science curriculum that have been used by about 1,000,000 students. He is currently funded by NSF with $2.0M and by private foundations including the Hasler Foundation Switzerland $3M. Partnerships with other organizations such as Code.org have provided huge exposure: 2017 during the one week of the Hour of Code event alone about a quarter million students participated in Repenning's tutorial.

keywords

agent-based simulation, computer in education, end-user programming, computer science education, cyberlearning, visual programming

Publications

selected publications

book
- Principles of Computational Thinking Tools 2017
- Educating Learning Technology Designers 2008
chapter
- Principles of Computational Thinking Tools. 291-305. 2017
- Smart Education durch Computational Thinking in der Primarschule. 201-219. 2016
- Collective Programming: Making End-User Programming (More) Social. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 325-330. 2011
- Semiotic Traces of Computational Thinking Acquisition. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 155-170. 2011
- Visualizing student game design project similarities 2010
- Creating Educational Gamelets.. 200-229. 2008
- What Makes End-User Development Tick? 13 Design Guidelines. 51-85. 2006
- Programming by Analogous Examples. 351-XVIII. 2001
- The Information Superhighway: The Atom-Bomb of the 90s. 205-212. 1999
conference proceeding
- Escaping the Turing Tar-Pit with AI Programming Blocks. 1-2. 2024
- Scaffolding Creative Programming Projects. 1-6. 2024
- Is Drawing Video Game Characters in an Hour of Code Activity a Waste of Time?. 93-98. 2018
- Teaching how to teach Computational Thinking 2018
- Helping Teachers and Students Learn to use 3D in AgentCubes Online. 103-104. 2017
- Exploring Computational Music Thinking in a Workshop Setting with Primary and Secondary School Children. 1-8. 2017
- The Solothurn Project - Bringing Computer Science Education to Primary Schools in Switzerland. 218-223. 2017
- Employing Retention of Flow to Improve Online Tutorials. 63-68. 2017
- Retention of Flow: Evaluating a Computer Science Education Week Activity 2017
- Transforming “Hard and Boring” into “Accessible and Exciting” 2016
- Drops and Kinks. 76-79. 2016
- Drops and Kinks: Modeling the Retention of Flow for Hour of Code Style Tutorials 2016
- Computational Thinking Tools. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 218-222. 2016
- Piloting Computer Science Education Week in Mexico. 431-436. 2016
- Retention of Flow. 633-638. 2016
- Launching Swiss Computer Science Education Week. 11-16. 2015
- Collaboration and Computational Thinking A Classroom Structure. 183-187. 2015
- Grounding Computational Thinking Skill Acquisition Through Contextualized Instruction. 207-216. 2015
- Closing The Cyberlearning Loop. 12-17. 2015
- “Closing The Cyberlearning Loop: Enabling Teachers to Formatively Assess Student Programming Projects,” 2015
- Real Time Assessment of Computational Thinking. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 49-52. 2014
- Early validation of computational thinking pattern analysis. 213-218. 2014
- The Consume - Create Spectrum : Balancing Convenience and Computational Thinking in STEM Learning. 659-664. 2014
- Making Educational Games That Work in The Classroom A New Approach for Integrating STEM Simulations. IEEE Consumer Electronics Society's International Games Innovations Conference, IGIC. 228-235. 2013
- Computing creativity 2013
- The simulation creation toolkit. 501-506. 2013
- Will it stick?. 597-602. 2013
- "Computing Creativity: Divergence in Computational Thinking,". 359-364. 2013
- "Conversational Programming: Exploring Interactive Program Analysis,". 63-74. 2013
- "The Simulation Creation Toolkit: An Initial Exploration Into Making Programming Accessible While Preserving Computational Thinking ". 501-506. 2013
- "Will it Stick? Exploring the Sustainability of Computational Thinking Education Through Game Design,". 597-602. 2013
- “The Zones of Proximal Flow: Guiding Students Through A Space Of Computational Thinking Skills and Challenges,". 67-74. 2013
- Engineering an Open-Web Educational Game Design Environment. Proceedings - Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC. 867-876. 2012
- Performance evaluation of user-created open-web games. 730-732. 2012
- Toward an Emergent Theory of Broadening Participation in Computer Science Education. 173-178. 2012
- AgentCubes: Enabling 3D Creativity by Addressing Cognitive and Affective Programming Challenges.. 2762-2771. 2012
- Social computational thinking tools: reinventing computation education in public schools 2011
- COMPUTING LEARNING ACQUISITION?. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 243-+. 2011
- Computing Indicators of Creativity. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 231-232. 2011
- Conversational Programming in Action. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 263-264. 2011
- Conversational programming in action. 263-264. 2011
- Making Programming more Conversational. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 191-194. 2011
- Successful Visual and End-User Programming Systems from Industry. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 5-5. 2011
- CS education re-kindles creativity in public schools. 183-187. 2011
- Towards democratizing computer science education through social game design. 48-51. 2011
- Recognizing Computational Thinking Patterns. 245-250. 2011
- Can Learning Acquisition be Computed?. 243-244. 2011
- Towards the Automatic Recognition of Computational Thinking for Adaptive Visual Language Learning. 59-66. 2010
- Visualizing Student Game Design Project Similarities. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 285-287. 2010
- Cyberspace Meets Brick and Mortar: An Investigation Into How Students Engage in Peer to Peer Feedback Using Both Cyberlearning and Physical Infrastructures. 184-188. 2010
- Cyberspace meets brick and mortar. 184-188. 2010
- Using Scalable Game Design to Teach Computer Science From Middle School to Graduate School. 224-228. 2010
- Inspiring collaborative benefits. 1-5. 2010
- Scalable Game Design and the Development of a Checklist for Getting Computational Thinking into Public Schools. 265-269. 2010
- A. Cyberspace Meets Brick and Mortar: Finding the Sweet Spot between Cyberlearning and Traditional Instruction 2010
- Inspiring Collaborative Benefits: An Interaction Between a Virtual and A Physical Group Learning Infrastructure. 2010
- Towards the Web of Applications: Incorporating End User Programming into the Web 2.0 Communities. 9-13. 2009
- Towards the web of applications. 9-14. 2009
- Making university education more like middle school computer club. 9-16. 2009
- Collaborative End-User Development on Handheld Devices. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC. 237-+. 2008
- Using Scalable Game Design to Promote 3D Fluency: Assessing the AgentCubes Incremental 3D End-User Development Framework. 47-54. 2008
- Agent warp engine. 279-286. 2008
- End-user visualizations. 492-493. 2008
- Broadening Participation through Scalable Game Design. 305-309. 2008
- X-expressions in XMLisp. 1-11. 2007
- Collaborative diffusion. 574-585. 2006
- AgentCubes: Raising the ceiling of end-user development in education through incremental 3D. 27-+. 2006
- Excuse me, I need better AI!. 169-178. 2006
- Mobility agents. 127-127. 2006
- Perspectives on end user development. 1048-1048. 2003
- Collaborative use & design of interactive simulations. 59-es. 1999
- Designing mixed textual and iconic programming languages for novice users. 187-194. 1998
- Graphical rewrite rule analogies: Avoiding the inherit or copy & paste reuse dilemma. 40-46. 1998
- 1997 visual programming challenge summary. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, Proceedings. 11-18. 1997
- Behavior processors: Layers between end-users and Java virtual machines. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, Proceedings. 402-409. 1997
- The agentsheets behavior exchange. 26-26. 1997
- Tactile programming: A unified manipulation paradigm supporting program comprehension, composition and sharing. IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, Proceedings. 102-109. 1996
- Agentsheets common ground: Shared visual agentalk. 421-434. 1996
- Internet repositories for collaborative learning: Supporting both students and teachers. 321-328. 1995
- Deceived by ease of use. 177-188. 1995
- Remote exploratoriums. 117-118. 1995
- Internet repositories for collaborative learning. 321-328. 1995
- Programming as problem solving. 182-191. 1994
- AGENTSHEETS - A TOOL FOR BUILDING DOMAIN-ORIENTED VISUAL PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS. 142-143. 1993
- Agentsheets. 142-143. 1993
- Agentsheets. 30-30. 1992
- Using Agentsheets to create a voice dialog design environment. 1199-1207. 1992
journal article
- Explicative Programming. Communications of the ACM. 30-33. 2021
- Die ersten 1000: Computational Thinking als obligatorische Ausbildung für Primarschullehrpersonen in der Schweiz. MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung. 595-616. 2020
- Scalable Game Design Switzerland. MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung. 27-52. 2018
- Scale or Fail. Communications of the ACM. 40-42. 2018
- Moving Beyond Syntax: Lessons from 20 Years of Blocks Programing in AgentSheets. 68-91. 2017
- Computational Thinking für alle! Scalable Game Design als Einstieg in Computational Thinking 2016
- Scalable Game Design: A Strategy to Bring Systemic Computer Science Education to Schools through Game Design and Simulation Creation. ACM Transactions on Computing Education. 2015
- Beyond Minecraft Facilitating Computational Thinking through Modeling and Programming in 3D. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. 67-70. 2014
- Beyond Minecraft: Facilitating Computational Thinking through Modeling and Programming in 3D. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. 68-71. 2014
- Making Programming Accessible and Exciting. Computer. 78-81. 2013
- Programming is hard and boring: addressing cognitive and affective challenges in computer science education. 1-5. 2012
- Programming Goes Back to School. Communications of the ACM. 38-40. 2012
- Mr. Vetro: A Collective Simulation for teaching health science. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. 141-166. 2010
- AgentCubes: Incremental 3D end-user development. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing. 236-251. 2009
- Broadening participation through scalable game design. Sigcse Bulletin. 305-309. 2008
- Inflatable Icons: Diffusion-Based Interactive Extrusion of 2D Images into 3D Models. Journal of Graphics Tools. 1-15. 2005
- Agent-based end-user development. Communications of the ACM. 43-46. 2004
- Using components for rapid distributed software development. IEEE Software. 38-45. 2001
- AgentSheets: End-user programmable simulations. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. 2000
- Programming by analogous examples. Communications of the ACM. 90-97. 2000
- Developing educational software components. Computer. 50-+. 1999
- End-user programmable emulations - Tools for interactivity. Doctor Dobbs Journal. 40-+. 1999
- Learn to Communicate and Communicate to Learn. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. 7-7. 1998
- WebQuest: Using WWW and interactive simulation games in the classroom. First Monday. 1996
- Participatory theater: Interacting with autonomous tools for creative applications. Knowledge-Based Systems. 351-358. 1996
- WebQuest: Substantiating education in edutainment through interactive learning games. Computer Networks. 1307-1319. 1996
- Making learning a part of life. Communications of the ACM. 40-42. 1996
- REMOTE EXPLORATORIUMS - COMBINING NETWORK MEDIA AND DESIGN ENVIRONMENTS. Computers and Education. 163-176. 1995
- AGENTSHEETS - A MEDIUM FOR CREATING DOMAIN ORIENTED VISUAL LANGUAGES. Computer. 17-25. 1995
- Programming Substrates to Create Interactive Learning Environments. Interactive Learning Environments. 045-074. 1994

Teaching

courses taught

CSCI 7000 - Current Topics in Computer Science
Primary Instructor - Summer 2018
Covers research topics of current interest in computer science that do not fall into a standard subarea. May be repeated up to 18 total credit hours.

Background

education and training

Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder 1993
M.S., University of Colorado Boulder 1990
B.S., University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) 1985

International Activities

geographic focus

Americas Transnational Region
Europe Continent
Mexico Country
Switzerland Country

Other Profiles

ORCID iD

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2165-7533

Google Scholar

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J1cpm_QAAAAJ&hl=en