Design, application and evaluation of data visualization towards development of computational thinking skills

Computational thinking is increasingly recognized as an important skill that people should acquire in the 21st century, and secondary education is a critical level for introducing the concept of computational thinking to children. Data visualisation is a promising way of promoting computational thinking among secondary education students. Data visualisation aims at presenting complex data visually in an effective manner. The objective of this method is to design, develop and assess the data visualization application which will contribute to the development of computational thinking (CT) skills of students. To this end, the present study was conducted as two separate practices with 11 th grade students (n=51) at the secondary education level at the Fall and Spring Semesters of 2018-2019 Academic Year through a synthetized design-based research method (Van Wyk ve de Villers, 2014). Each practice takes place within a cycle, and cycles themselves consist of two cycles as "problem analysis", "design solutions", "development solutions", "assessment in practice" and "reflection" phases causing dual results". At the end of cycles, the designed data visualization applications and the feedbacks received were assessed in the cycles of "assessment in practice and reflection", and the data visualisation application process was arranged in line with the obtained results. The findings of the study were presented by the researchers by using the "Computational Thinking Rubric in Data Visualisation", "Student Reflection Form" and "Teacher Reflection Form". At the end of the study, it was concluded that the computational thinking skills, algorithmic thinking, problem solving and creativity variables of the students could be supported by data visualisation applications. According to this finding, the effectiveness of the data visualization application process developed by the design based research model conducted in cycles in the research on computer thinking skills was demonstrated.