TSAI, WEN HSIN
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology of Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education Student
Email：ingenuitytsai@gmail.com
CHEN, SUFEN
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology of Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education Professor
Email：sufchen@mail.ntust.edu.tw
Abstract
This study aims to investigate the effect of “Computer Science Unplugged” on elementary school students’ learning attitudes and computational thinking ability in Taiwanese elementary computer science education. Quasi-experimental design was adopted in this study. The participants were eight classes of fifth grade students in a Northern elementary school in Taiwan. There were one hundred students in the experimental group in which “Computer Science Unplugged” was conducted, while the other one hundred in the control group had normal computer science programming using Scratch. The experiment lasted four weeks and included four lessons for each class in total. Research tools include “Computer Science Learning Attitude Scale” and “Test of Computational Thinking Achievement”. Before and right after the experiment, the students were tested.
The pre-test and post-test scores were processed by four statistics methods: (1) one-way MANCOVA was employed to test the differences of the learning attitudes and computational thinking between the groups; (2) paired t-tests were employed to test the change of the scores from pre- to post-tests; (3) Pearson’s correlation was employed to investigate the relation between the variables.
Keywords :Computer Science Unplugged, Learning Attitude, Computational Thinking