Abstract
The aim of this research was to use intelligent decision support systems to obtain student-centred preferences for learning applications to promote critical thinking in first year programming students. This study focuses on the visual programming environment and critical thinking as the gateway skill for student success in understanding programming. Twenty-five critical thinking criteria were synthesized from the literature. As a quantitative study, 217 randomly selected students from an approximate target population of 500 programming students to rate four learning Apps, namely, Scratch, Alice, Blockly and MIT App Inventor, against critical thinking criteria to establish the App that best promotes critical thinking among first year programming students. There were 175 responses received from the 217 randomly chosen programming students who willingly contributed to the study. Consequently, the distinctiveness of this paper lies in its use of the Fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Situation) multi-criteria decision-making algorithm to rank criteria for critical thinking, calculate their weights on the basis of informed opinion and hence scientifically deduce the best rated App among the available alternatives that promote critical thinking among first year programming students. The results showed that Scratch promoted critical thinking skills the best in first year programming students whilst Blockly promoted critical thinking skills the least. As a contribution to the study, policy-makers and academic staff can be potentially supported to make informed decisions about the types of learning Apps to consider for students when confronted with multiple selection criteria.
Highlights
The problem associated with teaching programming to novice learners is exacerbated by the complex and abstract nature of the field and the heavy reliance on 21st century skills such as critical and computational thinking
In a case study performed by PintoLlorente et al in [5] on the impact of the visual programming environment (VPE) among primary school learners, it was determined to have promoted their critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities
In this research paper fuzzy set theory is introduced to model ambiguity and uncertainty in a Multi-criteria group decision-making (MCDM) problem and integrated with TOPSIS to appreciate the benefits of its practicality and ease of use, enabling evaluations to be expressed in a linguistic language and converted to triangular fuzzy numbers and implementing the algorithm using a software tool
Summary
The problem associated with teaching programming to novice learners is exacerbated by the complex and abstract nature of the field and the heavy reliance on 21st century skills such as critical and computational thinking. Various other studies have revealed that visual programming environments support the constructivist approach to learning and contribute to enhancing one’s skills of independent learning, creative thinking, problem-solving, reflection and collaboration [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. This has resulted in an upsurge of educational programming environments and tools aimed at stimulating the learners’ interest, making programming accessible to people of all interests and ages and minimizing the challenges of understanding programming [13]
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