Alexander Repenning is the Director of the Scalable Game Design project, a computer science professor adjunct, a founder of AgentSheets Inc., and a member of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Repenning is the inventor of drag and drop blocks programming. His research interests include computer science education, end-user programmable agents, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence.

Contributions

Repenning is the creator of the

AgentSheets AgentSheets was one of the first modern block-based programming language for kids. The idea of AgentSheets was to overcome syntactic challenges found in common text-based programming languages by using drag and drop mechanisms conceptualizing com ...

and AgentCubes Cyberlearning tools used for game design and computational science applications. As the Director of the Scalable Game Design project, using

, he leads an effort to reinvent computer science education in public schools through game design starting at the middle school level. With over 10,000 students, and with funding from the National Science Foundation (ITEST and CE21 programs) and Google, the Scalable Game Design project is conducting the largest US study of computer science education at the middle school level including inner city schools, remote rural areas, and Native American communities. Results indicate that students, across genders and ethnicities, are not only highly motivated to learn computer science through game design but they also learn essential computational thinking skills. They acquire skills through game design, which later they can leverage in STEM simulation creation. Repenning's theoretical contributions include a pedagogical framework called the Zones of Proximal Flow Basawapatna, A., Repenning, A., Koh, K. H., and Nickerson, H., The Zones of Proximal Flow: Guiding Students Through A Space Of Computational Thinking Skills and Challenges. In Proceedings of the International Computing Education Research (ICER 2013) (San Diego, CA, USA., August 12–14, 2013). ACM Press. http://sgd.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/images/4/4c/ICER-2013_zones_of_proximal_flow.pdf combining Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development with Csikszentmihalyi’s state of

Flow Flow may refer to: Science and technology * Fluid flow, the motion of a gas or liquid * Flow (geomorphology), a type of mass wasting or slope movement in geomorphology * Flow (mathematics), a group action of the real numbers on a set * Flow (psych ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Repenning, Alexander Living people American computer programmers American computer scientists University of Colorado Boulder alumni Programming language designers Year of birth missing (living people)