Abstract
Since Jeannette Wing proposed Computational Thinking (CT) as a fundamental skill to everyone (Wing, 2006), CT has become a phenomenon. In addition, it has been verified by program accreditation and employer requirements that undergraduate students in STEM need to develop higher-order thinking and metacognitive skills in problem solving. Thus, in our institution we intended to teach CT to students in Applied Science majors and support them to master the CT skill. While developing a CT course, we noticed that there was little agreement on what and how to teach CT. In this paper, we examine the CT course and provide a review that addresses two questions: 1) What to teach CT and 2) how to teach CT effectively. More specifically, we present the course topics covered in the CT course and describe six teaching strategies we utilized to engage students in learning and doing CT. While analyzing the course development reflectively, we become informed to continually improve the course in order to teach CT effectively in future.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 121-126 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education |
| State | Published - 2020 |
| Event | 4th International Conference on Computational Thinking Education, CTE 2020 - Hong Kong, Hong Kong Duration: Aug 19 2020 → Aug 21 2020 |
Keywords
- Applied Science majors
- Computational thinking
- Course development
- Problem solving
- Student-centered learning
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Computer Science Applications