A Mobile Programming Course Based on Computational Thinking Process for Elementary IT-Gifted Students

In this research, we examined previous works on Computational Thinking (CT) to identify the essential stages of CT and developed a 6-week programming course with jQuery Mobile that follows the identified CT process. This CT process-oriented programming course aims to help IT-gifted students in the fifth and sixth year of primary school understand the problem solving process. In our mobile programming course, students mostly work with straightforward pre-built widgets and layouts rather than writing many lines of logical codes. After completing the course, feedback from the participated 34 students was gathered online. In their comments, words such as “making my own decisions,” “achievement,” “confidence,” and “more interested in the subject I chose” were commonly found. In addition, some students wrote that the experience of developing a web app that runs on their own smartphones makes them have the ambition to become a professional software developer.