Monkeying Around Media and Hands-On Activity Prototypes: Formative Research Report

“Monkeying Around: Digital Media and Parent/Child Engagement Resources to Increase Preschool Computational Thinking” is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking concepts and practices. WGBH, a leading producer of educational STEM media, developed prototypes of videos and hands-on activities around the project’s computational thinking learning goals for young children. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted a small formative study with 15 English-speaking families (children and their caregivers) to test out these media and activity prototypes. This report summarizes what we learned about resources and strategies that best support the project’s learning goals.