Developing computational thinking in secondary school students through unplugged activities

Abstract

This article presents a study that investigated the development of computational thinking in high school students through the use of unplugged activities. A quasi-experimental approach with a pretest-posttest design was used to assess computational thinking skills, including algorithmic thinking, decomposition, generalisation, abstraction and evaluation. The results revealed a slight improvement in students' computational thinking development after the implementation of the unplugged activities, with particular emphasis on algorithmic thinking, decomposition and evaluation skills. However, these improvements did not reach statistical significance. In conclusion, it is suggested that future larger studies incorporating both unplugged and plugged activities, and covering different cross-cutting areas, should be conducted.