Progressive flowchart development scaffolding to improve university students’ computational thinking and programming self-efficacy

ABSTRACT

As one of the core skills of the 21st century, computational thinking has received increasing attention from educators and researchers. Although some research has been conducted on computational thinking, few studies examined the impact of learning activities on students’ computation thinking skills from the perspective of cognitive development. Based on the theory of scaffolding instruction, a progressive thinking training approach with flowcharts was proposed to cultivate students’ computational thinking skills. A quasi-experiment was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the training. Forty-nine Chinese tertiary students undertaking a programming course were randomly assigned into two groups – the experimental and control groups. During the course, the experimental group received progressive training, and the control group received non-progressive training. The results showed that the experimental group gained a significantly higher level of academic achievement than the control group. Meanwhile, the experimental group showed a remarkable improvement in programming self-efficacy. Furthermore, the participants in the experimental group showed a higher level of computational thinking skills, including cooperative learning, critical thinking, and problem solving skills. In summary, the progressive thinking training approach with flowcharts could not only improve the participants’ computational thinking skills and programming self-efficacy, but also help them to achieve better academic outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Computational thinking
• programming self-efficacy
• flowchart
• progressive teaching
• scaffolding theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jia-Hua Zhang

Dr. Jia-Hua Zhang is an associate professor at the Department of Educational Technology, Zhejiang Normal University. His research interests include learning behaviours analysis and intelligent tutoring system.

Bin Meng

Mr. Bin Meng is a graduate student at the Department of Educational Technology, Zhejiang Normal University. His research interests include teacher education and computational thinking.

Liu-Cong Zou

Ms. Liu-Cong Zou is a teacher at Yanwu Primary School affiliated to Xiamen University. Her research interests include online learning and computational thinking.

Yue Zhu

Dr. Yue Zhu is a lecturer at the Department of Educational Technology, Zhejiang Normal University. Her research interests include blended learning and self-regulated learning.

Gwo-Jen Hwang

Dr. Gwo-Jen Hwang is a chair professor at the Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research interests include mobile learning, digital game-based learning, flipped classroom and AI in education.