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Exploring hypotheses about media computation

Research in computing education has been criticized as "Marco Polo," e.g., the researchers tried something and reported what happened. Our developing field needs more hypothesis-driven and theory-driven research. We will get there by making clear our goals and hypotheses, testing those goals and hypotheses explicitly, and critically reconsidering our results. My colleagues and I designed and evaluated a media-centric introductory computing approach ("Media Computation") over the last ten years. We started from a "Marco Polo" style and an explicit set of hypotheses. We have worked to test those hypotheses and to understand the outcomes. Our iterative effort has led us to explore deeper theory around motivation and learning. This paper serves as an example of a ten year research program that resulted in more hypotheses, a more elaborated theory, and a better understanding of the potential impacts of a computer science curriculum change.