Integrating computational thinking (CT) into the learning of school subjects is receiving increased attention. Developing students’ CT skills may not only advance their digital literacy but it may deepen subject specific learning as well. It is therefore interesting to investigate the learning of CT from a multidisciplinary perspective. This study describes the design of a CT integrated lesson for economics in which computer models in spreadsheets are used to simulate monetary policy. The lesson is structured according to the Use-Modify-Create strategy. The aim of this exploratory study is to evaluate the learning outcomes of this CT integrated lesson and students’ attitudes towards such a lesson. For this purpose, students’ exit tickets, feedback forms, supervisor observations and interviews with students have been analyzed. This qualitative analysis revealed that students perceived the lesson as difficult, especially during the Modify and Create phases. In addition, the results suggest that all phases are dependent on taking enough time to finish the Use phase to get familiar with the computational steps. Several suggestions have been given to improve the lesson, for instance, to use a simpler topic of economics. Furthermore, the analysis of students’ attitudes revealed that connections to CT could be made more explicit rather than implicitly embedded in the instructional strategy.
Visual Programming Languages are a common vehicle to teach programming. Usually, these languages use two-dimensional blocks or diagrams to structure a program and some 3D versions have emerged as well. Often, the visualization of creating programs with these tools is different from executing them. We present the design and prototype of a 3D Visual Avatar-based Programming Environment (VAPE-3D) in the form of a visual programming language with a syntonic Avatar as its central component, and a unified visualization to edit and execute a program.
Aiming for increased accessibility and adaptability, higher educational institutes are making their curricula more flexible, offering students more freedom to choose what courses they want to take. Making a well-informed choice out of many possible elective courses is difficult, because it requires the processing of a lot of, sometimes hard to find, information. In this paper, we describe the development of an evidence-informed digital tool to support CS students in a structured and informed exploration of all offered elective courses. Our focus is on a tool that will support students in making an autonomous choice and as such not give automated recommendations, since giving students ownership of the choice process will increase commitment and identification with the final choice, which in turn results in higher retention and satisfaction. To help students with this type of choice, research has been conducted with the following central question: “How can we support students with a choice support system for making autonomous well-informed choices for elective courses?”. To this aim, we conducted a design-oriented mixed method approach: based on an exploratory literature review and seven semi-structured interviews with students and study career advisors, we synthesized tentative success criteria and design principles for such a digital support tool, which guided the subsequent development of two prototypes by student project teams. We assessed the developed prototypes against the design principles, as well as two openly available Dutch course catalogues. The results include two prototypes that implement most of the design principles, elaborate trace log functionality and a backlog with additional functionalities. In the near future, we have planned a simulation study and a subsequent design and development iteration, with the ultimate goal of deriving design knowledge for software that supports a student in making well-informed choices in flexible higher education.
We present a targeted curricular improvement on an interdisciplinary Videogames Bachelor of Arts, to be implemented in the 2022/23 academic year. The aim is to solve student adaptation issues with the program’s interdisciplinarity that were heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The world has undergone major social changes in the last decades, leading us to a digital society. Although we have deeply changed the way we think, one subject has not changed in some countries such as Brazil: education. Brazilian students still sit in the classroom for hours while watching a professor speak. Even in undergraduate technology majors, such as Computer Science, the traditional learning methods remain and few innovations can be seen. This work shows a new curriculum for a discipline about environmental responsibility for undergraduate students in technology at a Brazilian university. The goal is to change the learning method using active learning, in which students are the protagonists of their own learning, while the professor acts only as a guide. Each class is 4 hours long and will be based on a different learning approach, therefore it must be self contained and well organized with a clear goal, so the professor can properly guide students to obtain the desired knowledge. This is a first step to change the way we see education to technological majors at our university, trying to bring innovation and new learning methods to a traditional environment.
