A Pilot Study of an Instrument to Assess Undergraduates’ Computational thinking Proficiency

Abstract

The potentiality of computational thinking (CT) in problem solving has gained much attention in academic communities. This study aimed at developing and validating an instrument, called Hi-ACT, to assess CT ability of university undergraduates. The Hi-ACT evaluates both technical and soft skills applicable to CT based problem solving. This paper reports a pilot study conducted to test and refine the initial Hi-ACT. Survey method was employed through which questionnaire comprising of 155 items was piloted among 548 university undergraduates. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares was applied to examine the Hi-ACT's reliability and validity. Composite reliability was used to assess internal consistency reliability, while convergent validity was evaluated using based on items' outer loadings and constructs' average variance extracted. As a result, 41 items were excluded, and an instrument to assess CT ability comprising 114 items and ten constructs (abstraction, algorithmic thinking, decomposition, debugging, generalization, evaluation, problem solving, teamwork, communication, and spiritual intelligence) was developed. The reliability and validity of the Hi-ACT in its pilot form have been verified.

Rasch Analysis for Disposition Levels of Computational Thinking Instrument Among Secondary School Students

“…Nevertheless, there is always an urge to distinguish ways to envision the measurement of CT across all disciplines. Consequently, the issue of assessment in current studies was found lacking compared to the studies investigating approaches to teach CT (Sondakh et al, 2020b). On the other hand, an instrument from the west may not suitable for use in Malaysia due to cross cultural differences.…”

“…However, adaptation of CT concepts in everyday life are not going to be easy and require thorough study (Sondakh et al, 2020a). Most of the attention on embedding CT during the past decade has centered on integration of CT skill in students with only little prominence about their perception, feeling or attitude towards the application of CT in problem solving across 2 / 15 various discipline or specifically in daily life (Sondakh et al, 2020b). Thus, development of an instrument to measure students' disposition towards CT is required.…”

What Else Can Be Learned When Coding? A Configurative Literature Review of Learning Opportunities Through Computational Thinking

“…In the cognitive domain, the authors consider some of the core skills, such as problem-solving, abstraction and decomposition, but also include a mix of general thinking skills such as reasoning, reflection, metacognition, and evaluation (Tang et al, 2020a). Attitudes and affective dispositions are used in other framings of CT as complements to the cognitive domain of CT (Sondakh et al, 2020; Tang et al, 2020a, 2020b). Although attitudes can impact students’ engagement with learning, it is difficult to distinguish specific learning opportunities offered in the context of CT (Velázquez-Iturbide, 2018).…”

Indonesian Undergraduate Students’ Perception of Their Computational Thinking Ability

“…The Hi-ACT [34] was used as data collection instrument in this study. This scale comprises of 110 seven-point Likert type items and ten constructs.…”