Exploring Undergraduate Students’ Computational Literacy in the Context of Problem Solving

Abstract

This paper evaluates undergraduate students’ performance during a problem-based computational science course in a materials science and engineering program. The course guides students to apply computational tools and methods to solve problems in materials science and engineering. The study assesses the relationship between phases of the problem-solving process and computational literacy skills in the context of MATLAB® computational challenges. Students complete five projects that require combined problem-solving skills and computational skills. Results suggest that aligning computational challenges with problem solving phases can support student learning and computational literacy skills development. The findings also suggest that different computational challenges require different forms of support for the learners to successfully complete the problem solving process.