Basu, Satabdi; Rachmatullah, Arif; McElhaney, Kevin; Alozie, Nonye; Yang, Hui; Hutchins, Nicole; Biswas, Gautam; Mills, Kelly. “A comparison of computational practices and student challenges across three types of computational modeling activities integrating science and engineering.” Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, CSCL (2024): 1778-1781. https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/10808
Computational models (CMs) give pre-college students a chance to connect science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) with computational thinking (CT) in ways that reflect how STEM is used in the real world. But not all students and teachers are ready to take on the challenge of learning or teaching programming. To make computing more accessible and reduce the difficulty of learning to code, this study explores simpler versions of computational modeling that involve little or no programming. Instead of writing code, students focus on understanding and evaluating existing code and computer simulations. The paper shares results from a small pilot study that looked at how students engaged with CT practices and what challenges they faced across three types of these easier-to-use CM activities.
