Tasks for Assessing Computational Thinking Skills at Secondary School Level

Abstract

Computer science has become an essential part of many disciplines. Skills of thinking computationally have become increasingly important for everyone. Systematic development of the skills of computational thinking (CT) includes developing the skills of solving problems by defining the problem, solving the problem algorithmically and analyzing the solution. As there has been a rise of teaching CT skills at secondary school level, an instrument for assessing CT skills is needed. The goal of this study is to modify and empirically test an instrument for assessing CT skills. An instrument with 10 tasks was created and a study was conducted with 649 secondary school students. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to confirm that the instrument is suitable for assessing skills of algorithmic design and pattern recognition. Results show that this modified instrument can be used to assess and set directions for developing CT skills at secondary school level.