Preparing Teachers to Engage Students in Computational Thinking through an Introductory Robot Design Activity

Abstract

This article describes an introductory computational thinking (CT) lesson that was implemented into five educational technology classes at a large university in the southern United States. A total of 88 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the lesson. The project was the result of a collaboration between education faculty and a computer science professor from another university. The CT lesson was a basic robot design activity adapted for different course formats: face-to-face, online, and blended. The author’s impressions of how the students responded to the activity, what they learned about CT, and future directions for integrating CT into teacher education curricula are also discussed.