Desenvolvimento do Pensamento Computacional no Ensino Superior

um estudo realizado com a ferramenta App Inventor

Abstract

The development of computational thinking is one of the great challenges for students in higher education, since these concepts are not worked in the initial grades of Elementary School. When they reach higher education, mainly in computer courses, most of these students, because they have this gap in their training, face many difficulties in disciplines that need a greater abstraction power and require skills in solving problems and problems, analytical ability, etc. In this paper, we present a study that involved students of the Degree in Computing in the construction of applications for Android through the App inventor platform as a pedagogical strategy for the development of computational thinking. The theoretical background has brought to light the debate about computational thinking as well as the main aspects of the App Inventor Platform. In methodological terms, techniques of exploratory approach were adopted because it was the first study carried out within the scope of the Licentiate Course in Computing, application of workshops that involved the knowledge of the use of the App Inventor platform. In order to evaluate the applications developed by the students, we chose peer evaluation, through rubrics in which the students themselves evaluated the work of their colleagues and also joint analysis of the activities with the students. The results show that the activity represented a satisfactory cognitive gain because it contributed to the learning of some abstract concepts in a playful and engaging way.