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Exploration of Computational Thinking of Software Engineering Novice Students Based on Solving Computer Science Tasks

Authors:
Vladimiras Dolgopolovas at Vilnius University
Vladimiras Dolgopolovas
Tatjana Jevsikova at Vilnius University
Tatjana Jevsikova
Valentina Dagiene at Vilnius University
Valentina Dagiene
Loreta Savulionienė at Vilnius University of Applied Sciences
Loreta Savulionienė
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Abstract

During the recent years computational thinking has been actively promoted through the K-12 curriculum, higher education, contests, and many other initiatives. Computational thinking skills are important for a further students' educational and professional career. Our focus is on computational thinking for software engineering novice students, a term meant to encompass a set of concepts and thought processes that are helpful in formulating problems and their solutions. Annually organized international challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking ''Bebras'' has developed many tasks to promote deep thinking skills in this area. It is important to motivate students to solve various informatics or computer science tasks and evaluate their computational thinking abilities. The paper presents a study conducted among first-year students of software engineering, studying the structured programming course. As aninstrument to measure computational thinking, a test of internationally approved and well-preselected tasks from the ''Bebras'' challenge has been suggested and validated. The correlation between the students' test results and the structured programming course results has been investigated. We conclude with a discussion and future directions to enhance computational thinking skills of novice software engineering students.
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International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 32, No. 3(A), pp. 1–10, 2016
Printed in Great Britain
0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00
© 2016 TEMPUS Publications.
Exploration of Computational Thinking of Software
Engineering Novice Students Based on Solving
Computer Science Tasks
VLADIMIRAS DOLGOPOLOVAS
Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, 4 Akademijos Street, Vilnius LT-08663, Lithuania and Faculty
of Electronics and Informatics, University of Applied Sciences, 15 J. Jasinskio Street, LT-01111, Vilnius, Lithuania.
E-mail: vladimiras.dolgopolovas@mii.vu.lt
TATJANA JEVSIKOVA and VALENTINA DAGIENE˙
Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, 4 Akademijos Street, Vilnius LT-08663, Lithuania.
E-mail: tatjana.jevsikova@mii.vu.lt, valentina.dagiene@mii.vu.lt
LORETA SAVULIONIENE˙
Faculty of Electronics and Informatics, University of Applied Sciences, 15 J. Jasinskio Street, LT-01111, Vilnius,
Lithuania.
E-mail: l.savulioniene@eif.viko.lt
During the recent years computational thinking has been actively promoted through the K-12
curriculum, higher education, contests, and many other initiatives. Computational thinking skills are
important for a further students’ educational and professional career. Our focus is on computational
thinking for software engineering novice students, a term meant to encompass a set of concepts
and thought processes that are helpful in formulating problems and their solutions. Annually
organized international challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking ‘‘Bebras’’ has
developed many tasks to promote deep thinking skills in this area. It is important to motivate
students to solve various informatics or computer science tasks and evaluate their computational
thinking abilities. The paper presents a study conducted among first-year students of software
engineering, studying the structured programming course. As aninstrument to measure
computational thinking, a test of internationally approved and well-preselected tasks from the
‘‘Bebras’’ challenge has been suggested and validated. The correlation between the students’ test
results and the structured programming course results has been investigated. We conclude with a
discussion and future directions to enhance computational thinking skills of novice software
engineering students.
Keywords: computational thinking; Bebras challenge; computer science concepts; computer engineering
education; contest; novice programming students; novice software engineering students
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... The authors provided items and test information curves, and reported a non-significant correlation between the test scores and course grades on programming by software engineering students. The authors stated that the test measured a homogeneous ability of CT (Dolgopolovas et al., 2016), but they did not examine whether the items' categorization in terms of components and contents was reflected by the test dimensionality, and they did not provide evidence of how and if subjects with a background in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and subjects from non-STEM fields were discriminated by the test. Gouws et al. (2013) created a test to measure the CT performance of highereducation students. ...
... This is justified by the fact that the experts' judgments showed that they mainly chose algorithmic thinking and algorithms as first categories in both systems, and only secondarily they chose other categories (see Table 5). Furthermore, previous CT test validations suggest a hierarchically superior dimension Román-González et al. (2017), and some previous attempts allegedly evaluated one single homogeneous dimension (Dolgopolovas et al., 2016). ...
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... Therefore, the main skill is the ability to integrate different type of knowledge. Thus, the assessment can be based on an assessment of the improvement in the skills and cognitive abilities of students, including originality, non-traditional thinking skills, computational thinking skills (Dolgopolovas et al., 2016;Juškevičiene & Dagiene, 2018;Wing, 2008), critical thinking skills (Horvath & Forte, 2011;Stein et al., 2007), and problem solving ability (Mitrevski, 2019), the ability to synthesize and evaluate new information. ...
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... Answer (the correct answer is written in bold). Source: Dolgopolovas et al. (2016). ...
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Assessing Computational Thinking: The Relation of Different Assessment Instruments and Learning Tools
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