Integrate social simulation content with game designing curriculum to foster computational thinking

Computational thinking is a fundamental analytical ability to solve problems, design systems, and understand human behavior based on the fundamental concepts of computer science. The concept of computational thinking is almost needed on every profession in the computerization of society. Teaching computational thinking to cultivate problem solving ability by computer is a challenge of computer science education, especially for the K-12 level. Although studies introduce computational concepts by programming design, computational thinking and computer science are not computer programming. The study uses social simulation content (i.e. NetLogo, which uses muti-agent technology) to scaffold learning computational thinking concepts, such as simple genetic algorithm, parallel computing, artificial neural net, or deadlock (such as dining philosophers). To stimulate learning transfer onto computational thinking, NetLogo models library will be used to motivate reflection and meta-cognition development. Preliminary experimental results came from both questionnaires and artifacts. In the future, Gero's (1990) function-behaviour-structure (FBS) ontology will be used for the qualitative analysis to explain the outcomes of learning transfer.