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Discourse Indicative of Computational Thinking within a Virtual Community

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.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1703290
Date05 1900
CreatorsWoods, Charles
ContributorsKnezek, Gerald, Lin, Lin, Dunn, Lemoyne, Lee, Youngjin
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatviii, 140 pages, Text
RightsPublic, Woods, Charles, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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