Developing a community definition and teaching modules for computational thinking

Abstract

The NSF-funded Northwest Distributed Computer Science Department (NW-DCSD) project brings together 24 multi-disciplinary faculty from 19 diverse colleges and universities in an effort to change the face of computing in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. We offer an innovative and inclusive vision of computing in the 21st century and foster opportunities for multi-disciplinary and inter-institutional computing and computer science education collaborations. Over the project's first two years, this community has created 9 engaging, easy-to-use learning modules that teach various levels of computational thinking to two different audiences: non-computer science and computer science undergraduate students. This paper presents the development of a community definition of computational thinking, the learning modules, initial findings, unanticipated challenges, and next steps.