Informatics in Education

This paper investigates unplugged computing as a formal pedagogical strategy to teaching computing to a Maltese secondary class of Year 9 students. It aims at identifying the effectiveness of this pedagogy outlining the strengths and weaknesses in its application, taking into consideration the level of attainment for students, as well as the impact on teachers’ lesson preparation. This research study is based on the delivery of five unplugged activities. It analyses students’ reaction when exposed to such unplugged activities to assess the viability of using this pedagogy when teaching computing concepts in a formal setting. The study concludes that unplugged computing is an effective pedagogical strategy that helps attain a high level of engagement and student involvement, encouraging teamwork and collaboration. Students experience a wide attention span and good retention through the constant link of computing scenarios to real-life examples and the use of tangible non-computing related objects. Notwithstanding, the study also identifies certain limitations of this pedagogy, mainly that it is not sufficient as a standalone pedagogy, but needs to be applied in conjunction with other pedagogies to be able to cover all the expected learning objectives of the curriculum.

Computer science concepts have an important part in other subjects and thinking computationally is being recognized as an important skill for everyone, which leads to the increasing interest in developing computational thinking (CT) as early as at the comprehensive school level. Therefore, research is needed to have a common understanding of CT skills and develop a model to describe the dimensions of CT. Through a systematic literature review, using the EBSCO Discovery Service and the ACM Digital Library search, this paper presents an overview of the dimensions of CT defined in scientific papers. A model for developing CT skills in three stages is proposed: i) defining the problem, ii) solving the problem, and iii) analyzing the solution. Those three stages consist of ten CT skills: problem formulation, abstraction, problem reformulation, decomposition, data collection and analysis, algorithmic design, parallelization and iteration, automation, generalization, and evaluation.

Computational thinking abilities development is a recent popular research topic. Teachers need support and examples of suiTable STEAM activities that focuses on CT implementation. For this purpose, possible class activities were presented for CT abilities development purpose. Teachers from different disciplines identified possible interconnections between presented activities and CT abilities. The case study results showed that primary assumptions were quite different from teachers believes as assumptions weakly correlate with five teachers opinions. The implication of these results is that it provides a better understanding of CT integration in education and is particularly useful for researchers interested in CT and its applications in different subjects.

This study investigated the role of using unplugged computing activities on developing computational thinking (CT) skills of 6th-grade students. The unplugged computing classroom activities were based on the Bebras challenge, an international contest that aims to promote CT and informatics among school students of all ages. Participants of the study were fifty-three 6th-grade students from two public middle schools in Istanbul. The unplugged computing activities involved the tasks with three different difficulty levels covering the CT processes found to be common in CT definitions in the literature. To evaluate students’ CT skills, two equivalent tests were constructed from Bebras tasks considering the same parameters (difficulty levels and CT processes). The results showed that students’ post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores. There were not any significant differences between students’ scores in terms of gender, and there was no interaction effect between students’ CT scores and their gender.

The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of unplugged coding activities carried out with middle school students on their computational thinking skills. This study employed nested-mixed design, which is a mixed research method; the data were supported by including the qualitative phase into an experimental study. In this frame, a group of 114 middle school students consisting of 5th graders were given coding training titled "Kesfet Project - I Discover Coding" by using unplugged coding content. The Computational Thinking Scale was applied to the students at the beginning and end of the training; the results obtained from the scale were analyzed by means of a paired t test. Finally, it was found out that unplugged coding activities had a positive effect on the improvement of computational thinking skills of the students. An examination of the sub-factors revealed that there is statistically no significant change in the problem solving skill despite the positive impact observed on creativity, algorithmic thinking, collaboration and critical thinking skills. Following the analysis of observation and daily data, the findings obtained revealed that the students usually displayed high levels of motivation and class participation in unplugged coding activities, they had difficulty in concretizing certain concepts as well as subjects requiring mathematical knowledge; various teaching methods and techniques were used in classes; the students liked the activities especially due to their appealing nature and their relation to daily life; however, there were occasional problems with scheduling of activities and teamwork due to over-crowded class size; the students experienced problems in achieving outcomes such as perceiving the relationship between computer science and mathematics and analyzing the given problem, and could have difficulty in associating between computer science and mathematics or between the subjects learned and the computer lesson, and in analyzing a given problem.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the properties of paper-and-pencil data collection instruments developed to measure Computational Thinking (CT) based on several variables. Thus, keywords were identified and used in searches conducted in various databases. The outcomes of the search were analyzed based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria and 64 studies that focused on CT measurement were identified. Content analysis findings were classified under several themes. Based the present study findings, it was determined that the number of tools developed to measure CT demonstrated an increasing trend over time. Furthermore, it was found that the above-mentioned studies included mainly tests. Moreover, it was observed that the processes of ensuring validity and reliability were not clearly specified for more than half of the paper-and-pencil data collection instruments designed to measure CT. Based on the findings, several recommendations were presented for future studies and implementations in the related field.

Teaching computational thinking in K-12 as a 21th century skill is becoming increasingly important. Computational thinking describes a specific way of reasoning building on concepts and processes derived from algorithms and programming. One way to teach these concepts is games as an effective and efficient alternative. This article presents SplashCode, a low-cost board game to reinforce basic algorithms and programming concepts. The game was developed in a systematic way following an instructional design process, and applied and evaluated in a Brazilian public school with a total of 65 students (grade 5 to 9). First results indicate that the game can have a positive impact on motivation, learning experience, and students' learning, as well as contribute positively to social interaction, relevance, and fun. Results of this study may assist in the selection of games as an instructional strategy and/or in the development of new games for teaching computational thinking.

The role of teachers is very important for the educational utilization of Computational Thinking (CT) and its integration in education. As with any innovation, CTs' successful integration considerably depends on the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of the teachers who will be asked to implement it. The study of these characteristics, concerning Computer Science (CS) teachers in Greece, was the objective of a survey research, theoretically supported by the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Findings reveal intense interest of participants on CT and their willingness to participate in professional development programs. Participants also reveal misconceptions of CT and negative attitudes toward its integration in education, that require further study and discussion. The researchers propose directions for the design and implementation of appropriate teachers training programs, while the findings can be exploited to support any effort of integrating CT in education.

The aim of this study is to develop a self-efficacy measuring tool that can predict the computational thinking skill that is seen as one of the 21st century's skills. According to literature review, an item pool was established and expert opinion was consulted for the created item pool. The study group of this study consists of 319 students educated at the level of secondary school. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, the scale consisted of 18 items under four factors. The factors are Reasoning, Abstraction, Decomposition and Generalization. As a result of applied reliability analysis, the Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient can be seen to be calculated as .884 for the whole self-efficacy scale consisting of 18 items. Confirmative factor analysis results and fit indexes were checked, and fit indexes of the scale were seen to have good and acceptable fits. Based on these findings, the Computational Thinking Self-efficacy Scale is a valid and reliable tool that may be used in measuring to predict Computational Thinking.

In this study, effectiveness of a computer science course at the secondary school level is investigated through a holistic approach addressing the dimensions of instructional content design, development, implementation and evaluation framed according to ADDIE instructional design model where evaluation part constituted the research process for the current study. The process has initiated when the computer science curriculum had major revisions in order to provide in-service teachers with necessary support and guidance. The study is carried through as a project, which lasted more than one year and both quantitative and qualitative measures were used through a sequential explanatory method approach. The intention was to investigate the whole process in detail in order to reveal the effectiveness of the process and the products. In this regard, not only teachers' perceptions but also students' developments in their perceptions of academic achievement and computational thinking, as well as correlations between the computational thinking sub-factors were investigated. The findings showed that the instructional materials and activities developed within the scope of the study, positively affected the computational thinking and academic achievement of students aged 10 and 12 years old. The teachers' weekly feedbacks regarding application structures and implementation processes were also supported the findings and revealed some more details that will be useful both for instructional designers and teachers.