Are our children developing computer-complementary skills?

In this project, a team of experts from the fields of computer science, educational science, engineering and mathematics developed and tested various methods and tools to assess computational thinking skills in schoolchildren. This involved technological aids and analogue methods. The tools developed were implemented in all of Switzerland’s official languages and in English, and deployed in Switzerland’s various language regions for children and teenagers aged between 3 and 16 throughout their compulsory schooling.

Computational thinking is the ability to break down problems into their different parts, to develop solution strategies and to present them in a way that can be understood and executed both by humans and computers. Computational thinking is recognised as a central element in various national and cantonal education strategies. Up to now, very few tools have been available to measure the impact of the implemented measures.

The aim of this project was to develop tools and methods for the assessment of computational thinking skills in children and young people during their compulsory schooling The tools and methods should be easy to use for teachers on the one hand, and allow partly-automated, large-scale assessment on the other. They should also allow data to be collected in Switzerland’s various language regions.

The main goal of the project was to develop theoretically-sound and easy-to-use tools and methods to systematically assess computational thinking skills in compulsory education in Switzerland. These developments are relevant on two levels:

• For teachers, as they allow lessons and learning on computational thinking to be designed more effectively.
• For the education system, as they allow large-scale assessment of the effectiveness of cantonal strategies to promote digital education in general, and computational thinking in particular.

Three main messages

1. From a very young age, schoolchildren of both sexes are able to develop complex algorithms, and generally exhibit computational thinking skills.
2. Well-designed computational thinking tasks allow the same activities to be used to assess and support these skills throughout a child’s compulsory schooling – and beyond.
3. Comprehensively assessing children’s computational thinking skills does not require complex tasks or methods. In particular, no artificial intelligence or tutorial systems are needed to conduct a reliable, scalable and automatable assessment.

Assessing the development of computational thinking skills through an intelligent tutoring system: an exploratory study in the cantons of St Gallen, Vaud and Ticino