Using Student Performance to Assess CS Unplugged Activities in a Classroom Environment

Computer Science Unplugged activities have been shown to be successful in increasing student interest in computer science when used in outreach and after school events. There is less research available on adapting these extra-curricular activities for use in a classroom setting, where there are more students and the activities must support educational goals, not just changes in attitude. We describe our work in updating several existing CS Unplugged activities as well as introducing some new activities for use in an American middle school classroom. One challenge when using CS Unplugged activities is to determine what, if anything, students are learning. In this paper we detail one approach that links the updated activities to computational thinking skills, then incorporates worksheets where students illustrate their understanding.