Collaborative Research: Computational Thinking Through Mobile Computing

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This project introduces undergraduate students to computational thinking (CT) by engaging them to create apps for mobile phones and tablets that are both useful and personally meaningful. CT is a 21st century STEM literacy whose concepts are needed by informed citizens and workers to solve problems and understand complex systems in many domains.In this project, students learn CT by creating mobile apps using App Inventor, a visual blocks-based programming environment. The project is developing online curricular modules that use mobile app programming to teach CT principles and mobile computing design concepts. These modules include web-based tutorials, video lectures, screencasts, programming exercises, and quizzes --- online materials that give students more in-class time to engage in active learning. Several introductory and intermediate courses are being developed based on these modules. The project is also devising, testing, and evaluating new techniques for assessing students' CT knowledge in the context of mobile computing and project-based courses.In partnership with MIT's new Center for Mobile Learning, this project is widely disseminating curricular materials, course designs, and assessment rubrics, and is building a national community of undergraduate educators focused on teaching CT via mobile computing.This project reflects mobile computing's transformation of society by building a curriculum in which undergraduates learn CT not by merely using apps, but by creating them. The materials developed in this project will support both novice and intermediate students in constructionist learning and in design, innovation, and entrepreneurship activities that connect computer science to other disciplines.