Designing, Deploying and Evaluating an Undergraduate Course on the “Didactics of Informatics”

Abstract

This paper presents the design, deployment and evaluation of an undergraduate course on the Didactics of Informatics. The course was designed taking into account relevant literature and aims at preparing undergraduate students of Informatics for teaching the subject at schools. Specifically, the course aims at educating students, who are potential pre-service teachers, for teaching Informatics utilizing contemporary learning and digital technologies, educational environments and games, as well as students’ difficulties and representations mainly for programming and Computational Thinking. The course was offered for the first time as an elective course at an Informatics department during the academic year 2020–21, while 265 students attended and participated in the exams of the course. Students’ performance in the assignments and the exams, as well as in an anonymous questionnaire administered by the Quality Assurance unit of the University show that the course was well perceived by students. Students evaluated positively the quality and organization of the course, considered its content interesting for their studies and the educational material sufficient. Although the results are promising, it is clear that refinements are necessary in order for the course to accomplish its learning objectives.