Skills in computational thinking of engineering students of the first school year

Concepción Varela; Carolina Rebollar; Olatz García; Eugenio Bravo; Javier Bilbao

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02820

Skills in computational thinking of engineering students of the first school year

Heliyon. 2019 Nov 15;5(11):e02820. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02820. eCollection 2019 Nov.

Authors

Concepción Varela¹, Carolina Rebollar¹, Olatz García¹, Eugenio Bravo¹, Javier Bilbao¹

Affiliation

¹ Applied Mathematics Department, University of the Basque Country, Pl. Ing. Torres Quevedo, 1, 48013, Bilbao, Spain.

Abstract

In this world of the digital era, in which we are living, one of the fundamental competences that students must acquire is the competence in Computational Thinking (CT). Although there is no general consensus on a formal definition, there is a general understanding of it as a set of skills and attitudes necessary for the resolution, with or without a computer, of problems that may arise in any area of life. Measuring and evaluating which of the CT skills students have acquired is fundamental, and for this purpose, previously validated measuring instruments must be used. In this study, a previously validated instrument is applied to know if the new students in the Engineering Degrees of the University of the Basque Country have the following skills in CT: Critical Thinking, Algorithmic Thinking, Problem Solving, Cooperativity and Creativity.

Keywords: Education; Educational development; Evaluation in education; Pedagogy; Teaching research.