Exploring the effects of web-mediated computational thinking on developing students’ computing skills in a ubiquitous learning environment

Computational thinking in higher education: A review of the literature

“…Hypothesis: Men and women will not differ in profile distribution. [48] To investigate the effects of ubiquitous learning and computational thinking on student computing skills. [56] To explore how undergraduate biology students develop both quantitative and computational skills in an introductory course on computer science.…”

“…As far as student learnings throughout the interventions, there were a host of different outcomes. For example, Tsai et al [48] found that the intervention using a framework of computational thinking alone did not significantly result in better student computing skills. Alternatively in Lan [22], a course embedded with computational thinking saw higher knowledge scores for students as opposed to a control group.…”

“…When authors are not all referring to the same constructs, the results are more likely to differ. One good practice that was observed was the use of control groups within many of the studies, with examples being [21,22,48].…”

“…As observed from Table 5, there were a host of different pedagogical methods used throughout the data set, however, many of the papers in the set did not fully explain the exact nature of the teaching environment, only discussing small pieces such as the nature of the activity or mentioning aspects of teaching such as lecturing. Some studies mentioned specific frameworks that were used such as ubiquitous learning [48], the computational thinking-based creative problem solving model [19], and the use of computational creativity exercises [38]. However, many papers did not have formal frameworks or explicit definitions of the teaching method and pedagogy used.…”

“…For example, many studies reported on student perceptions of their learning, attitudes toward the activity, or student interest based on an intervention that used computational thinking, at least in part [19,21,22,41]. In contrast, many studies focused on aspects of student learning, understanding, or performance as measured through course assessments [18,21,22,38,42,48].…”