A Pilot Study of an Instrument to Assess Undergraduates’ Computational thinking Proficiency

Abstract

The potentiality of computational thinking (CT) in problem solving has gained much attention in academic communities. This study aimed at developing and validating an instrument, called Hi-ACT, to assess CT ability of university undergraduates. The Hi-ACT evaluates both technical and soft skills applicable to CT based problem solving. This paper reports a pilot study conducted to test and refine the initial Hi-ACT. Survey method was employed through which questionnaire comprising of 155 items was piloted among 548 university undergraduates. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares was applied to examine the Hi-ACT's reliability and validity. Composite reliability was used to assess internal consistency reliability, while convergent validity was evaluated using based on items’ outer loadings and constructs’ average variance extracted. As a result, 41 items were excluded, and an instrument to assess CT ability comprising 114 items and ten constructs (abstraction, algorithmic thinking, decomposition, debugging, generalization, evaluation, problem solving, teamwork, communication, and spiritual intelligence) was developed. The reliability and validity of the Hi-ACT in its pilot form have been verified.