The use of engineering model-building activities to elicit computational thinking: A design-based research study

Lyon Joseph A.; Magana Alejandra J.

摘要

Background Computation and computational thinking are of great interest to both engineering research and teaching communities. Effective learning environments are needed to incorporate computational thinking within the engineering disciplines. Design-based research is uniquely positioned to address this need for designing effective learning environments.Purpose This design-based research study characterizes the different ways in which students used computational thinking when building computational models. The design of the model-building activities was grounded in productive failure and model-eliciting activities.Design The design-based research study implemented the computational modeling activities within an engineering capstone course. The research question was: What types of computational thinking outcomes emerge when engineering students build computational models? Thematic analysis was applied to individual student artifacts to identify key computational thinking outcomes that were elicited as a result of the intervention.Results Throughout the building of the model, students demonstrated the use of computational thinking outcomes, mainly abstraction, algorithmic thinking, evaluation, generalization, and decomposition. However, the diversity and density of use for each outcome were different and unique.Conclusions This study shows how building computational models, when guided by current educational theories, can allow for students to practice the use of computational thinking and for educators to incorporate these key practices into their engineering classrooms.

机译：背景技术计算和计算思维对工程研究和教学社区具有很大兴趣。需要有效的学习环境来纳入工程学科的计算思维。基于设计的研究是独特的，以解决设计有效学习环境的这种需求。这种基于设计的研究研究表征了学生在构建计算模型时使用计算思维的不同方式。模型建设活动的设计基于生产性失败和模型引出的活动。基于设计的研究研究在工程帽课程中实施了计算建模活动。研究问题是：工程学生建立计算模型时出现了哪些类型的计算思维结果？专题分析适用于各个学生文物，以确定由于干预而引起的关键计算思维结果。结果在整个模型中，学生证明了使用计算思维结果，主要是抽象，算法思维，评估，泛化和分解。然而，每个结果的使用多样性和密度是不同的和唯一的。结论本研究表明，建立计算模型，当由当前的教育理论引导时，可以允许学生练习计算思维和教育者融合这些关键的使用在他们的工程教室做法。

The use of engineering model-building activities to elicit computational thinking: A design-based research study

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