Computational Thinking and MOOC - Oriented Computer Courses Teaching Mode for Non-Computer Major

Abstract

Non-computer major students in the future are required to master new computer methods to support different subjects’ research. In order to make the computational thinking fuses with the thinking of other subjects, and promote the formation of all students’ creative thinking, this paper comes up with the teaching problems of the existing non-computer majors about the setting of teaching content, teaching pattern, teaching methods and teaching tools, and then proposes five reformation schemes. The traditional “teaching method/studying method” is tools oriented, while this paper puts forward a novel teaching model which can completely change the traditional teaching approach to computational thinking oriented blending learning, flipped class and cooperative learning model. Furthermore we use the independently developed MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform and the MOOC classes involved with teachers and students, aiming at training students’ computational thinking to realize the flipped class. One-year practice result shows that the proposed teaching model can turn the main teaching objective to making students achieve computing thinking skill from traditional prescriptive teaching and to create a basic computer technology educational class system which takes the computer science theory, knowledge application, basic skill as foundation, takes computational thinking as principle line and takes the information application skills as goal. Index Terms –Computational Thinking. MOOC Platform. Flipped Class. Independent Study.