Assessing computational thinking in Computer Science Unplugged activities

Abstract

There is very little research on assessing computational thinking without using a programming language, despite the wide adoption of activities that teach these concepts without a computer, such as CS Unplugged. Measuring student achievement using CS Unplugged is further complicated by the fact that most activities are kinesthetic and team-oriented, which contrasts traditional assessment strategies designed for lectures and individual tasks. To address these issues, we have created an assessment strategy that uses a combination of in-class assignments and a final project. The assessments are designed to test different computational thinking principles, and use a variety of problem structures. The assessments were evaluated using a well-defined rubric along with notes from classroom observations to discover the extent CS Unplugged activities promote computational thinking. The results from our experiment include several statistically significant shifts supporting the hypothesis that students are learning computational thinking skills from CS Unplugged. Student performance across all of the worksheets gave insight into where problems can be improved or refined such that a greater number of students can reach proficiency in the subject areas.