Marcos Román-González

Comparing computational thinking development assessment scores with software complexity metrics

The development of computational thinking skills through computer programming is a major topic in education, as governments around the world are introducing these skills in the school curriculum. In consequence, educators and students are facing this discipline for the first time. Although there are many technologies that assist teachers and learners in the learning of this competence, there is a lack of tools that support them in the assessment tasks. This paper compares the computational thinking score provided by Dr. Scratch, a free/libre/open source software assessment tool for Scratch, with McCabes Cyclomatic Complexity and Halsteads metrics, two classic software engineering metrics that are globally recognized as a valid measurement for the complexity of a software system. The findings, which prove positive, significant, moderate to strong correlations between them, could be therefore considered as a validation of the complexity assessment process of Dr. Scratch.

Code to Learn: Where Does It Belong in the K-12 Curriculum?.

The introduction of computer programming in K-12 has become mainstream in the last years, as countries around the world are making coding part of their curriculum. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical studies that investigate how learning to program at an early age affects other school subjects. In this regard, this paper compares three quasi-experimental research designs conducted in three different schools (n=129 students from 2 and 6 grade), in order to assess the impact of introducing programming with Scratch at different stages and in several subjects. While both 6 grade experimental groups working with coding activities showed a statistically significant improvement in terms of academic performance, this was not the case in the 2 grade classroom. Notable disparity was also found regarding the subject in which the programming activities were included, as in social studies the effect size was double that in mathematics.

On the Automatic Assessment of Computational Thinking Skills: A Comparison with Human Experts

Programming and computational thinking skills are promoted in schools worldwide. However, there is still a lack of tools that assist learners and educators in the assessment of these skills. We have implemented an assessment tool, called Dr. Scratch, that analyzes Scratch projects with the aim to assess the level of development of several aspects of computational thinking. One of the issues to address in order to show its validity is to compare the (automatic) evaluations provided by the tool with the (manual) evaluations by (human) experts. In this paper we compare the assessments provided by Dr. Scratch with over 450 evaluations of Scratch projects given by 16 experts in computer science education. Our results show strong correlations between automatic and manual evaluations. As there is an ample debate among educators on the use of this type of tools, we discuss the implications and limitations, and provide recommendations for further research.

Development of Computational Thinking Skills through Unplugged Activities in Primary School

Computational thinking is nowadays being widely adopted and investigated. Educators and researchers are using two main approaches to teach these skills in schools: with computer programming exercises, and with unplugged activities that do not require the use of digital devices or any kind of specific hardware. While the former is the mainstream approach, the latter is especially important for schools that do not have proper technology resources, Internet connections or even electrical power. However, there is a lack of investigations that prove the effectiveness of the unplugged activities in the development of computational thinking skills, particularly for primary schools. This paper, which summarizes a quasi-experiment carried out in two primary schools in Spain, tries to shed some light on this regard. The results show that students in the experimental groups, who took part in the unplugged activities, enhanced their computational thinking skills significantly more than their peers in the control groups who did not participate during the classes, proving that the unplugged approach may be effective for the development of this ability.

Towards Data-Driven Learning Paths to Develop Computational Thinking with Scratch

With the introduction of computer programming in schools around the world, a myriad of guides are being published to support educators who are teaching this subject, often for the first time. Most of these books offer a learning path based on the experience of the experts who author them. In this paper we propose and investigate an alternative way of determining the most suitable learning paths by analyzing projects developed by learners hosted in public repositories. Therefore, we downloaded 250 projects of different types from the Scratch online platform, and identified the differences and clustered them based on a quantitative measure, the computational thinking score provided by Dr. Scratch. We then triangulated the results by qualitatively studying in detail the source code of the prototypical projects to explain the progression required to move from one cluster to the next one. The result is a data-driven itinerary that can support teachers and policy makers in the creation of a curriculum for learning to program. Aiming to generalize this approach, we discuss a potential recommender tool, populated with data from public repositories, to allow educators and learners creating their own learning paths, contributing thus to a personalized learning connected with students’ interests.