T{h}inker for Engaging Learning Experience in Computational Thinking and Programming

This paper aims to study the potential of T{h}inker, a custom designed physical computing toolkit, to engage and enable students from diverse background to focus on the design, problem solving and programming aspects in a fun and creative way. 877 first year undergraduate students from 7 engineering disciplines took a 2 hour laboratory session with T{h}inker and at the end participated in a 5-point Likert scale survey. The survey results showed that T{h}inker provides an engaging way to learn computational thinking and programming; has the potential to offer a variety of project opportunities; is easier to tinker with and (upon little practice) can provide appropriate difficulty level for entry-level undergraduate students while implementing the project ideas. This engaging potential of T{h}inker can be attributed primarily to the exploratory design and problem solving style it promoted in the laboratory against few predefined ways of problem solving expected in typical programming laboratory sessions.