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Computational thinking, the creative thought process behind algorithmic design and programming, is a crucial introductory skill for both computer scientists and the population in general. In this thesis I perform an investigation into introductory computer science education in the United States and find that computational thinking is not effectively taught

Computational thinking, the creative thought process behind algorithmic design and programming, is a crucial introductory skill for both computer scientists and the population in general. In this thesis I perform an investigation into introductory computer science education in the United States and find that computational thinking is not effectively taught at either the high school or the college level. To remedy this, I present a new educational system intended to teach computational thinking called Genost. Genost consists of a software tool and a curriculum based on teaching computational thinking through fundamental programming structures and algorithm design. Genost's software design is informed by a review of eight major computer science educational software systems. Genost's curriculum is informed by a review of major literature on computational thinking. In two educational tests of Genost utilizing both college and high school students, Genost was shown to significantly increase computational thinking ability with a large effect size.
ContributorsWalliman, Garret (Author) / Atkinson, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis advisor) / Lee, Yann-Hang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Bioscience High School, a small magnet high school located in Downtown Phoenix and a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) focused school, has been pushing to establish a computer science curriculum for all of their students from freshman to senior year. The school's Mision (Mission and Vision) is to: "..provide

Bioscience High School, a small magnet high school located in Downtown Phoenix and a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) focused school, has been pushing to establish a computer science curriculum for all of their students from freshman to senior year. The school's Mision (Mission and Vision) is to: "..provide a rigorous, collaborative, and relevant academic program emphasizing an innovative, problem-based curriculum that develops literacy in the sciences, mathematics, and the arts, thus cultivating critical thinkers, creative problem-solvers, and compassionate citizens, who are able to thrive in our increasingly complex and technological communities." Computational thinking is an important part in developing a future problem solver Bioscience High School is looking to produce. Bioscience High School is unique in the fact that every student has a computer available for him or her to use. Therefore, it makes complete sense for the school to add computer science to their curriculum because one of the school's goals is to be able to utilize their resources to their full potential. However, the school's attempt at computer science integration falls short due to the lack of expertise amongst the math and science teachers. The lack of training and support has postponed the development of the program and they are desperately in need of someone with expertise in the field to help reboot the program. As a result, I've decided to create a course that is focused on teaching students the concepts of computational thinking and its application through Scratch and Arduino programming.
ContributorsLiu, Deming (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
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Description
Electromyography (EMG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) are techniques used to detect electrical activity produced by the human body. EMG detects electrical activity in the skeletal muscles, while EEG detects electrical activity from the scalp. The purpose of this study is to capture different types of EMG and EEG signals and to

Electromyography (EMG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) are techniques used to detect electrical activity produced by the human body. EMG detects electrical activity in the skeletal muscles, while EEG detects electrical activity from the scalp. The purpose of this study is to capture different types of EMG and EEG signals and to determine if the signals can be distinguished between each other and processed into output signals to trigger events in prosthetics. Results from the study suggest that the PSD estimates can be used to compare signals that have significant differences such as the wrist, scalp, and fingers, but it cannot fully distinguish between signals that are closely related, such as two different fingers. The signals that were identified were able to be translated into the physical output simulated on the Arduino circuit.
ContributorsJanis, William Edward (Author) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Thesis director) / Santello, Marco (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-12
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Description
Computational thinking, the fundamental way of thinking in computer science, including information sourcing and problem solving behind programming, is considered vital to children who live in a digital era. Most of current educational games designed to teach children about coding either rely on external curricular materials or are too complicated

Computational thinking, the fundamental way of thinking in computer science, including information sourcing and problem solving behind programming, is considered vital to children who live in a digital era. Most of current educational games designed to teach children about coding either rely on external curricular materials or are too complicated to work well with young children. In this thesis project, Guardy, an iOS tower defense game, was developed to help children over 8 years old learn about and practice using basic concepts in programming. The game is built with the SpriteKit, a graphics rendering and animation infrastructure in Apple’s integrated development environment Xcode. It simplifies switching among different game scenes and animating game sprites in the development. In a typical game, a sequence of operations is arranged by players to destroy incoming enemy minions. Basic coding concepts like looping, sequencing, conditionals, and classification are integrated in different levels. In later levels, players are required to type in commands and put them in an order to keep playing the game. To reduce the difficulty of the usability testing, a method combining questionnaires and observation was conducted with two groups of college students who either have no programming experience or are familiar with coding. The results show that Guardy has the potential to help children learn programming and practice computational thinking.
ContributorsWang, Xiaoxiao (Author) / Nelson, Brian C. (Thesis advisor) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
The nonprofit organization, I Am Zambia, works to give supplemental education to young women in Lusaka. I Am Zambia is creating sustainable change by educating these females, who can then lift their families and communities out of poverty. The ultimate goal of this thesis was to explore and implement high

The nonprofit organization, I Am Zambia, works to give supplemental education to young women in Lusaka. I Am Zambia is creating sustainable change by educating these females, who can then lift their families and communities out of poverty. The ultimate goal of this thesis was to explore and implement high level systematic problem solving through basic and specialized computational thinking curriculum at I Am Zambia in order to give these women an even larger stepping stool into a successful future.

To do this, a 4-week long pilot curriculum was created, implemented, and tested through an optional class at I Am Zambia, available to women who had already graduated from the year-long I Am Zambia Academy program. A total of 18 women ages 18-24 chose to enroll in the course. There were a total of 10 lessons, taught over 20 class period. These lessons covered four main computational thinking frameworks: introduction to computational thinking, algorithmic thinking, pseudocode, and debugging. Knowledge retention was tested through the use of a CS educational tool, QuizIt, created by the CSI Lab of School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University. Furthermore, pre and post tests were given to assess the successfulness of the curriculum in teaching students the aforementioned concepts. 14 of the 18 students successfully completed the pre and post test.

Limitations of this study and suggestions for how to improve this curriculum in order to extend it into a year long course are also presented at the conclusion of this paper.
ContributorsGriffin, Hadley Meryl (Author) / Hsiao, Sharon (Thesis director) / Mutsumi, Nakamura (Committee member) / Arts, Media and Engineering Sch T (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05