Computational Thinking Education for Children: Algorithmic Thinking and Debugging

The benefits of developing children's computational thinking have been widely discussed with various approaches and learning tools. This paper reports the piloting of second-year longitudinal study, aiming to examine the effect of computational thinking education on the 5 th grade students (n =...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in2018 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE) pp. 328 - 334
Main Authors Wong, Gary K. W., Shan Jiang
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.12.2018
Subjects
algorithmic thinking
coding education
computational thinking
debug
Debugging
Education
Games
primary school
Problem-solving
Programming profession
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN2470-6698
DOI10.1109/TALE.2018.8615232

Cover

More Information
Summary:The benefits of developing children's computational thinking have been widely discussed with various approaches and learning tools. This paper reports the piloting of second-year longitudinal study, aiming to examine the effect of computational thinking education on the 5 th grade students (n = 85) as they develop their algorithmic thinking and debugging skills. The results show that students benefited from our designed curriculum with learning gains in algorithmic thinking, especially in analyzing and finding the essential instructions to solve computational problems. Students also achieved significant gains in debugging programs. The study demonstrated that with age-appropriate learning materials and learning approach, even young children can develop computational thinking skills important to thriving in 21st century. This pilot study sets the direction of analyzing the rest of the Sth grade students' performance as well as the next year study.
ISSN:2470-6698
DOI:10.1109/TALE.2018.8615232