Assessment of Computational Thinking (CT) in Scratch Fractal Projects: Towards CT-HCI Scaffolds for Analogical-fractal Thinking

Learning from patterns and everyday creativity are two key trends in creative education. However, it is not easy to learn from or to create meaningful patterns. Fractals are repetitive patterns, which can result in interesting outcomes. Patterns can be based on a recursive whole or recursive modifications of decomposable parts of the patterns. However, developing fractals or relating fractals to real-life applications or creative innovations is not that easy. Since pattern recognition, recursion and relation to real-life applications are part of computational thinking (CT), we find potential in assessing CT skills. We scope our research to fractal projects at the Scratch website. We aim to identify correlations between the respective scores for each project’s constructs corresponding to the respective total CT scores and to identify important human-computer interaction principles in scaffolding CT/fractal/fractal thinking development. Significance lies in identification of HCI design factors, possibility of using these findings as guides to better predict a student’s performance/mastery and to identify areas and strategies for improvement. Future work within a Restorative Innovation Framework concludes.