An Investigation of Undergraduates’ Computational Thinking in a Sophomore-Level Biomedical Engineering Course
An Investigation of Undergraduates’ Computational Thinking in a Sophomore-Level Biomedical Engineering Course
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DOI：
10.1109/fie43999.2019.9028503
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发表时间：
2019-10
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
H. Shoaib;M. Cardella;Aasakiran Madamanchi;David M. Umulis
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
H. Shoaib;M. Cardella;Aasakiran Madamanchi;David M. Umulis
本研究介绍了我们的工作重点是研究生物医学工程本科学生入门计算思维的发展。为了应对医疗保健行业日益增长的计算强度，生物医学工程（BME）本科教育开始强调计算和计算思维。计算思维是一种利用计算的概念和方法来解决跨学科和多学科问题的思维方式。从广义上讲，计算思维不仅与使用计算工具有关，还与通过数据表示、问题分解和算法设计来解决问题的思维过程有关。尽管计算思维如此重要，但关于BME本科生计算思维发展的研究工作或信息却很少。我们的研究重点是BME本科生如何在执行与解决问题相关的小组活动时发展计算思维技能。为了进行这项研究，我们在中西部一所公立大学为大约120名大二学生开设的热力学课程中采用了一种促进计算思维的教学方法。我们观察到课堂活动涉及分析性问题解决，随后是计算编码的伪代码生成。为了研究计算思维，我们收集了一小群学生的课堂观察，当他们想出一个分析问题的解决方案时。除了课堂活动的观察笔记，我们还对来自五个小组的个别学生进行了半结构化的访谈。对学生访谈的专题分析是为了分析学生对纳入计算密集型教学方法的反应。这项正在进行的工作有助于我们扩大对计算思维发展的理解，以及在BME本科生中进行计算思维活动所面临的挑战。
This research study presents our work focused on studying the development of introductory computational thinking in undergraduate biomedical engineering students. In response to the growing computational intensity of the healthcare industry, biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate education is starting to emphasize computation and computational thinking. Computational thinking is a way of thinking that uses concepts and methodologies of computing to solve problems in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subjects. In broader terms, computational thinking is not only associated with using computational tools but also with the thought process of solving a problem by data representation, problem decomposition, and algorithm design. Despite being so important, there is little research work or information available on the development of computational thinking in BME undergraduate students. Our research focuses on how BME undergraduate students develop computational thinking skills while performing group activities related to problem-solving. In order to conduct this study, we incorporate a teaching methodology that prompts computational thinking in a thermodynamics course being taught at a public mid-western university to approximately 120 sophomore students. We observe classroom activities involving analytical problem solving followed by pseudo code generation for computational coding. In order to investigate computational thinking, we collect classroom observations of small groups of students as they come up with a solution to an analytical problem with each other. We complement the observation notes of the classroom activities with follow up semi structured interviews with individual students from five groups. Thematic analysis of the student interviews is used in order to analyze student responses towards the incorporation of computation intensive teaching methodology. This Work in Progress helps us expand our understanding of computational thinking development and the challenges involved in performing computational thinking activity in BME undergraduate students.