Computational Thinking and Computational Action by Remote Teaching: An account of the experience of using AppInventor amid the COVID-19 pandemic

• Eder Jacques Farias Universidade Federal do Ceará
• Windson Viana de Carvalho Federal University of Ceará https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8627-0823
• Maria Elisa Gomes de Matos Universidade Estadual Vale do Acaraú
• George Rodrigues Universidade Estadual Vale do Acaraú
• Jerry Macedo Castro Universidade Estadual Vale do Acaraú
• Alysson Diniz dos Santos Universidade Federal do Ceará

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/cbie.sbie.2020.1523

Abstract

This paper presents a proposal for teaching Computational Thinking, combining the use of Computational Action to Design Thinking. We evaluated it in a course taught to students in the first semester of Computer Science, which also used the concepts of Emergency Remote Education. At the end of the course, each student developed a mobile application, which had as its central theme: `` Fighting the pandemic of COVID 19 ”. The applications implemented in the course were designed using Design Thinking principles and developed on the block programming platform App Inventor. The results indicate that after the course, the students showed a visible increase in knowledge about Computational Thinking and improved their motivation to learn more about the subject.

Keywords: Computational Thinking, Computational Action, Remote Teaching

References

Castoldi, R. and Polinarski, C. A. (2009). A utilização de recursos didático-pedagógicos na motivação da aprendizagem. I Simpósio Nacional de Ensino de Ciência e Tecnologia, 684.


Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16(3):297–334.


Gomes, A. J. and Mendes, A. J. (2015). À procura de um contexto para apoiar a aprendizagem inicial de programação. Educação, Formação & Tecnologias-ISSN 1646-933X,8(1):13–27.


Grover, S. and Pea, R. (2013). Computational thinking in k–12: A review of the state of the field. Educational researcher, 42(1):38–43.


Hodges, C., Moore, S., Lockee, B., Trust, T., and Bond, A. (2020). The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Educause Review, 27.


Hoegh, A. and Moskal, B. M. (2009). Examining science and engineering students’ attitudes toward computer science. In 2009 39th IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, pages 1–6. IEEE.


Karling, D. A. and Lisbôa, E. S. (2019). Desenvolvimento do pensamento computacional no ensino superior. Olhares & Trilhas, 21(1):58–69.


Lockwood, T. (2010). Design thinking: Integrating innovation, customer experience, and brand value. Simon and Schuster.


Oliveira, C. M. and Pereira, R. (2019). Desenvolvimento do pensamento computacional no ensino superior em ciência da computação. In Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, volume 8, page 1502.


Oliveira, E., Bittencourt, R., and Trindade, R. (2019). Designing and evaluating a computational thinking course for k-12 brazilian educators. In Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, volume 8, page 1094.


Román-González, M., Pérez-González, J.-C., and Jiménez-Fernández, C. (2017). Which cognitive abilities underlie computational thinking? criterion validity of the computational thinking test. Computers in Human Behavior, 72:678–691.


Tissenbaum, M., Sheldon, J., and Abelson, H. (2019). From computational thinking to computational action. Communications of the ACM, 62(3):34–36.


Vihavainen, A., Paksula, M., and Luukkainen, M. (2011). Extreme apprenticeship method in teaching programming for beginners. In Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education, pages 93–98.


Von Wangenheim, C. G., Hauck, J. C., Demetrio, M. F., Pelle, R., da Cruz Alves, N., Barbosa, H., and Azevedo, L. F. (2018). Codemaster–automatic assessment and grading of app inventor and snap! programs. Informatics in Education, 17(1):117–150.


Wang, L., Sy, A., Liu, L., and Piech, C. (2017). Learning to represent student knowledge on programming exercises using deep learning. International Educational Data Mining Society.


Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3):33–35.


Wing, J. M. and Stanzione, D. (2016). Progress in computational thinking, and expanding the hpc community.


Yadav, A., Mayfield, C., Zhou, N., Hambrusch, S., and Korb, J. T. (2014). Computational thinking in elementary and secondary teacher education. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 14(1):1–16.