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Because it is a fundamental skill to develop in education, computational thinking (CT) has become a growing field in education. The ability to solve algorithmic problems and reuse solutions from one concept to another is the definition of CT(J.Shute et al. p.142).  In this study, the goal was to investigate the CT knowledge between countries such as Sweden and South Africa. With both countries adopting different ways of teaching CT to their students. Sweden uses the method of implementing programming through the STEM(science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. While South Africa uses a separate subject called Coding and Robotics to teach their students. Using the Computational thinking test(CTt) and Bebras task as the method of choice to conduct the study on 22 students from Sweden and South Africa. By comparing the results from the students there were conclusions that could be drawn on how the differences in teaching had an impact on their gained CT knowledge. As well as if there were different concepts within the CTt where either country excelled over the other. The tests were conducted online and for the students from South Africa it was also conducted at home during their holiday break and it was concluded that there were no differences between the two countries since there was not enough evidence to support  a median other than 0 at the ∝ = 0.05 significance level. The results indicate that the difference in how CT is implemented in school made no difference for the results as well as the experience in block based and text based programming.

<p>  </p> <p>First-Year Engineering (FYE) programs are a critical part of engineering education, yet they are quite complex settings. Given the importance and complexity of FYE programs, research to better understand student learning and inform design and assessment in FYE programs is imperative. Therefore, this dissertation showcases various uses of data analytics and educational theory to support decision-making when designing and assessing FYE programs. Three case studies shape this dissertation work. Each study encompasses a variety of educational data sources, analytical methods, and decision-making tools to produce valuable findings for FYE classrooms. In addition, this dissertation also discusses the potential for incorporating data analytics into FYE programs. A more detailed description of the research methods, a summary of findings, and a list of resulting publications for each case study follows.</p> <p>The first case study investigated the relationship between two related Computational Thinking (CT) practices, data practices and computational problem-solving practices, in acquiring other CT competencies in a large FYE course setting. This study explored the following research questions: (1) What are the different student profiles that characterize their foundational CT practices at the beginning of the semester? and (2) Within these profiles, what are the progressions that students follow in the acquisition of advanced CT practices? To answer these questions, N-TARP Clustering, a novel machine learning algorithm, and sound statistical tools were used to analyze assessment data from the course at the learning objective level. Such a hybrid approach was needed due to the high-dimensionality and homogeneity characteristics of the assessment. It was found that early mastery of troubleshooting and debugging is linked to the successful acquisition of more complex CT competencies. This research was published in an article in the journal <em>IEEE Access</em>.</p> <p>The second case study examined self-regulation components associated with students' successful acquisition of CT skills using students' reflections and assessment data. This research was grounded in three subprocesses of the Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) theory: strategic planning, access to feedback, and self-evaluation. This study responded to the following research question: What is the relationship between SRL subprocesses: access to feedback, self-evaluation, strategic planning, and the acquisition of CT skills in an FYE course? Results from a structural equation model, which reflects the complexity and multidimensionality of the analysis, provided evidence of the relevance of the three subprocesses in the acquisition of CT skills and highlighted the importance of self-assessment as key to success in the acquisition of programming skills. Furthermore, self-assessment was found to effectively represent the task strategy and access to feedback from the students. This analysis led to the understanding that even though the three SRL subprocesses are relevant for the student's success, self-evaluation serves as a catalyst between strategic planning and access to feedback. A resulting article from this case study will be submitted to the <em>International Journal of Engineering Education</em> in the future.</p> <p>Lastly, the third study aimed to predict the students' learning outcomes using data from the Learning Management System (LMS) in an FYE course. The following research questions were explored in this case study: (1) What type of LMS objects contain information to explain students' grades in a FYE course? (2) Is the inclusion of a human operator during the data transformation process significant to the analysis of learning outcomes? Two different sections of a large FYE course were used, one serving as a training data set and the other one as a testing data set. Two logistic regression models were trained. The first model corresponded to a common approach for building a predictive model, using the data from the LMS directly. The second model considered the specifics of the course by transforming the data from aggregate user interaction to more granular categories related to the content of the class. A comparison was made between the predictive measures, e.g., precision, accuracy, recall, and F1 score for both models. The findings from the transformed data set indicate that students' engagement with the career exploration curriculum was the strongest predictor of students' final grades in the course. This is a fascinating finding because the amount of weight the career assignments contributed to the overall course grade was relatively low. This study will be presented at the 2022 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) national conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.</p>

This study explores the phenomenon of computational thinking indicated by the use of Bloom's taxonomy's cognitive domain verbs in the Scratch community, the online, collaborative environment for the Scratch Visual Programming Language (VPL). A corpus of 660,984 words from three Scratch community sub-forums provide the data for this study. By semantically aligning cognitive domain verbs of Bloom's revised taxonomy to computational thinking (CT) dimensions, the occurrences of the verbs in Scratch community sub-forums are used to indicate instances of computational thinking. The methodology utilizes qualitative coding and analysis with R® and RStudio®. The findings show language attributes such as expressions of imagination, sharing of creative details, collaborative development ideas, teaching, modeling, innovating, solutions focused, and technical support to be indicative of computational thinking and CT dimensions. The computational thinking dimension referred to as computational perspectives occurs most frequently within Scratch community participant discourse. The environmental factors found to contribute to computational thinking and the CT dimensions are supporting tools, personalized learning, supportive organizational culture, social learning, and organizational support. Common among the three computational dimensions is the contributing environmental factor described as supportive organizational culture, with the computational perspectives dimension prevailing among the corpora. The characteristics of computational perspectives and supportive organizational culture suggest a desire for human connection in the attainment of technological skills and knowledge.

[pt] Nas últimas décadas passamos por uma grande (r)evolução tecnológica, portanto, é indispensável que nossa sociedade tenha conhecimentos tecnológicos, dentre esses, o pensamento computacional e a linguagem computacional. Parte desse crescimento tecnológico vem da necessidade de resolução de problemas, muito deles ligados à matemática. No Brasil, temos a BNCC, que propõe relacionar resolução de problemas e pensamento computacional. Portanto esta pesquisa tem como objetivo trazer uma conexão entre essas duas áreas a fim de atender as demandas do professor, que pode precisar de uma ajuda na criação de uma aula envolvendo programação e matemática, e do aluno, que por sua vez precisa estar familiarizado com novas tecnologias que o mercado de trabalho exige. Propomos atividades com o uso de programas com linguagens computacionais a fim de estimular a discussão e inserção do pensamento computacional através da matemática nos currículos escolares. E por fim, este trabalho apresenta os resultados das atividades propostas, com os tópicos a serem considerados no que diz respeito ao PC e a matemática aplicada no ensino básico. / [en] In recent decades we have gone through a great technological (r)evolution, therefore, it is essential that our society has technological knowledge, among these, computational thinking and computational language. Part of this technological growth comes from the need to solve problems, many of them linked to mathematics. In Brazil, we have the BNCC, which proposes to relate problem solving and computational thinking. Therefore, this research aims to bring a connection between these two areas in order to meet the demands of the teacher, who may need help in creating a class involving programming and mathematics, and the student, who in turn needs to be familiar with new technologies that the labor market demands. We propose activities with the use of programs with computational languages in order to stimulate the discussion and insertion of computational thinking through mathematics in school curricula. Finally, this work presents the results of the proposed activities, with topics to be considered with regard to computational thinking and applied mathematics in basic education.

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Det har länge varit en debatt om programmering ska ingå i den svenska grundskolans läroplan. I Europa är valet att lägga till programmering i grundskoleutbildningen just nu en av de tydligaste trenderna. Flera länder, så som Danmark och England, har redan på något sätt infört programmering till sin grundskoleutbildning.I denna studie undersöks hur programmering och datalogiskt tänkande kan undervisas i skolan. Detta görs dels genom en genomgång av tidigare programmeringsspråk som har används till undervisning av programmering, men även genom en observations- och enkätstudie. Observationsstudien genomfördes i Malmö hos verksamheten CoderDojo, en global rörelse som erbjuder alla möjligheten att få testa på programmering. För att få en uppfattning av vad barn och ungdomar har för tankar och idéer om programmering genomförde vi även en enkätundersökning som skickades ut till CoderDojos samtliga verksamheter i Sverige. Resultatet från dessa enkäter gav en bild av vad barn och ungdomar har för tankar om hur programmering kan användas i den svenska skolan. / For some time now, there's been a debate if programming should be included in the Swedish compulsory school curriculum. The choice to add programming in primary education is now one of the clearest education trends in Europe. Several countries, such as Denmark and England, have already in some ways introduced programming to the primary education.This study examines how programming and computational thinking can be taught in the Swedish schools. We have done a review of past programming language used for teaching programming and computational thinking, but also through observational study and a survey study. The observational study was performed in Malmö at the community CoderDojo, a worldwide movement that offers everyone the opportunity to test programming. To get an idea of what children and teenagers think about programming, we also a performed a survey. This survey was sent out to all CoderDojos operations in Sweden. The results from these surveys give us a picture of what children and teenagers think on how programming and computational thinking might be used in the school.

The number of women in computing is significantly low compared to the number of men in the discipline, with African American women making up an even smaller segment of this population. Related literature accredits this phenomenon to multiple sources, including background, stereotypes, discrimination, self-confidence, and a lack of self-efficacy or belief in one's capabilities. However, a majority of the literature fails to represent African American females in research studies. This research used a mixed methods approach to understand the attitudes of African American middle school girls toward computer science and investigated the factors that influence these attitudes. Since women who do pursue computing degrees and continue with graduate education often publish in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in greater proportions than men, this research used an intervention to introduce African American middle school girls to computational thinking concepts using HCI topics. To expand the scope of the data collected, a separate group of girls were introduced to computational thinking concepts through Algorithms. Data were collected through both quantitative and qualitative sources, and analyzed using inferential statistics and content analysis. The results show that African American middle school girls generally have negative attitudes toward computer science. However, after participating in a computer science intervention, perceptions toward computer science become more positive. The results also reveal that four factors influence the attitudes of African American middle school girls toward computer science, such as the participation in an intervention, the intervention content domain, the facilitation of performance accomplishments, and participant characteristics like socioeconomic status, mother's education, school grades, and the use of smart phones and video game consoles at home. / Ph. D.

[pt] Atualmente há uma necessidade de uso da tecnologia para efetivar a participação do cidadão na sociedade. Os usuários estão deixando de ser somente consumidores passivos de software e uma fração crescente deles já passa a usar a tecnologia como um meio de expressão de novas ideias e oportunidades. Em um cenário democrático de futuro, quantas mais pessoas puderem manifestar-se através do uso eficaz e eficiente de tecnologia, menor o risco de que aqueles que podem fazê-lo determinem o que os demais poderão fazer. Porém, o processo de ensino e aprendizado de raciocínio computacional, base de competência para a autoexpressão através de software, é um grande desafio. Os professores de escolas de ensino fundamental e médio, por exemplo, geralmente não têm formação ou auxílio para ensinar conteúdos que envolvem conceitos de computação com os quais não estão familiarizados e, portanto, precisam, eles próprios, aprender. Esta tese apresenta um modelo para o design de documentação ativa destinada a apoiar o ensino e aprendizado de raciocínio computacional. O modelo é baseado em Engenharia Semiótica e sua instanciação em um cenário real de uso resultou em um documento utilizado em vários estudos empíricos realizados ao longo de três anos, em escolas de ensino fundamental e médio na região metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro. Na dimensão técnico-científica, a principal contribuição da tese é uma ferramenta epistêmica para estruturar as análises e decisões durante o design da metacomunicação de documentos ativos destinados a apoiar o ensino e aprendizado de autoexpressão através de software. / [en] Nowadays, there is a need to use technology to effect citizen participation in society. Users are no longer only passive software consumers and a growing share of them are using technology as a medium to express new ideas and opportunities. In a democratic future scenario, the more people can manifest themselves through the effective and efficient use of technology, the lower the risk that those who can do it determine what others will do. However, the process of teaching and learning computational thinking, which is the basic skill for self-expression through software, is a big challenge. Teachers need to learn computational concepts themselves before they can teach them to students. In elementary and high school they generally do not have support for teaching this kind of content. This thesis presents a model for the design of active documentation which aims at supporting the teaching and learning of computational thinking. The model is based on Semiotic Engineering theory and its instantiation in a real scenario came about as an active document used in several empirical studies during three years with elementary and high schools in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro. Technically and scientifically, the main contribution of this thesis is an epistemic tool for structure analyses and decisions during the design of metacommunication of active documents to support the teaching and learning of self-expression through software.

Computational Thinking (CT) is an integral process of thinking in humans that allows them to solve complex problems efficiently and effectively by breaking down a problem in smaller parts and using abstraction to create generalizable solutions. While the term CT has gained a lot of popularity in current education and research, there is still considerable ambiguity when it comes to defining exactly what CT encompasses. Since the definition and characteristics that make up CT vary so much, it is extremely difficult to measure CT in people. This thesis explains how different industry experts and organizations view CT and describes the importance of developing and integrating such a method of thinking in everyone, not just computer science professionals. The literature review also includes a comprehensive analysis of different tests and tools created to measure CT in people. This study proposes a web-based CT assessment collaborative tool that can be an effective instrument for teachers in assessing CT skills in students who are a part of the Teaching Engineering Concepts to Harness Future Innovators and Technologists (TECHFIT) program funded through NSF DRL-1312215 and NSF DRL-1640178. The vision of this tool is to become a go-to platform for CT assessment where questions collaborated by experts can be used to reliably assess the CT skills of anyone interested in measuring them.