Modeling At School – On the Benefits and Skill Development of the Use of Modeling Diagrams at School

The introduction of Computational Thinking skills at school has mostly been associated with programming skills. In this paper we present an approach that is based on modeling, a skill that is commonly taught in Computer Science degrees, often in the last years as it is considered a higher-level, complex skill. Modeling includes various thinking processes like abstraction, reduction, structuring, generalization, among others, that are part of computational thinking in particular and problem solving in general, too. Our hypothesis is that using different modeling techniques from computer science (e.g., UML diagrams) in several subjects at school can be a good way to introduce computational thinking. Therefore we have performed a semi-controlled experiment with Ni=558 students (age 8-16) and N
2
=18 educators that have used modeling in their lessons. Our results show a promising effect of the use of modeling in the lessons. Educators have a positive vision of modeling.