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Andreas Gramm, Malte Hornung, Helmut Witten · 2012
The didactical approach of teaching computer science in context aims at enabling learners to understand concepts of computer science better through the help of concrete illustration and meaning. This paper describes a learning arrangement in which students in lower secondary school education are motivated to engage with cryptographic algorithms ranging from Caesar to RSA by making them discover the challenges of a private and trustable communication over public networks. We also describe experiences we made by developing and testing the context-based learning process in several classes of different age. While designing and implementing context-based teaching material proved to be demanding, we were rewarded with a high level of both interest and understanding on the part of the students suggesting that context-based learning will prove a promising didactical tool for computer science teachers.