Assessment of Computational Thinking Skills of IT Students: Case Study of EMU-IT

Computational theories and perspectives are important components of modern day skills that are omnipresent and may be used across a variety of industries. Individuals in the digital age are anticipated to have computational thinking skills in different disciplines, but there is still no evidence as to what extent they have these skills and if they are at a sufficient level. This study focuses on exploring the level of computational thinking skills, and differences according to gender, age and years of study. The study was conducted on Information Technology undergraduate students who were studying in the 2017-2018 academic year spring semester at Eastern Mediterranean University. In this study a mixed method (convergent parallel design) is used to obtain the result in a more consistent manner. The data was collected from 197 participants by means of a questionnaire “Computational Thinking Skills Scale” in addition to conducting semi-interviews with 23 students to explore the attitudes and skills that they used to solve problem. The findings of the study indicate that EMU undergraduate IT students at sufficient level of computational thinking skills, however, student’s skills of algorithmic thinking and problem solving were a slightly low level of compared with creativity, cooperativity and critical skills which are the construct of computational thinking skills. In addition, the findings showed that, there were no significant differences in their computational thinking skills based on gender and age variables. However, significant differences exist in years of study variable. This is possibly due to the nature of course being studied in the school. So a future study could explore the emergence of computational thinking process in a non-problem based learning environment such as lecture-based courses where computational thinking activities are occasionally provided to the students after their lectures have been completed during the course period. Keywords: computational thinking skills, assessment methodologies, students’ attitudes.