Collaborative Research: Computational Thinking Through Mobile Computing

这个项目通过让大学生们为手机和平板电脑制作既有用又有个人意义的应用程序，向他们介绍计算思维（CT）。CT是一种21世纪的STEM素养，其概念是知情公民和工人在许多领域解决问题和理解复杂系统所需要的。在这个项目中，学生们通过使用App Inventor（一个基于可视化块的编程环境）创建移动应用程序来学习CT。该项目正在开发在线课程模块，使用移动应用程序编程来教授CT原理和移动计算设计概念。这些模块包括基于网络的教程、视频讲座、屏幕录像、编程练习和测验——这些在线材料可以让学生在课堂上有更多的时间参与主动学习。目前正在根据这些模块开发若干入门和中级课程。该项目还设计、测试和评估在移动计算和基于项目的课程背景下评估学生CT知识的新技术。该项目与麻省理工学院的新移动学习中心合作，广泛传播课程材料、课程设计和评估标准，并正在建立一个全国本科教育工作者社区，专注于通过移动计算教授CT。这个项目通过建立一个课程来反映移动计算对社会的转变，在这个课程中，本科生不仅仅通过使用应用程序来学习CT，而是通过创建应用程序来学习CT。本项目开发的材料将支持新手和中级学生进行建构主义学习，以及将计算机科学与其他学科联系起来的设计、创新和创业活动。

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.