Exploring Computational Thinking Across Disciplines Through Student-Generated Artifact Analysis

To meet the demands of 21st century societies, it is essential that faculty across disciplines engage students with course activities and assignments that foster the development of computational thinking (CT). In this study, we address two pertinent questions: (1) What types of artifacts do students develop across different disciplines in response to CT-driven problem prompts' and (2) What types of CT skills do these artifacts demonstrate? To answer the questions, we examined 273 artifacts developed by undergraduate students across seven course assignments from four disciplines: mathematics, sociology, music, and English using a rubric developed to evaluate the following CT skills: abstraction, decomposition, data analysis, and algorithmic thinking. We found that a range of skills were reflected across student artifacts.