Assessment of computational thinking skills to predict student learning and retention in the subject programming computer in higher education

Abstract

The objective of the article is to present the knowledge generated by carrying out an evaluation of specific computational thinking skills from 2016 to 2019. The aforementioned to determine the initial status of new students to the information technology career at the Universidad Tecnológica de Puebla - Mexico and promote academic performance in the Programming Methodology course in higher education. Through the selection of five items corresponding to five computational thinking skills (abstraction, generalization, decomposition, algorithmic design and evaluation) a relationship is established with the thematic contents of the course; therefore, it has been possible to determine what the strengths and weaknesses of students in order to support their academic performance. Two results stand out from the work done. First, the favorable impact on students for the acquisition of skills through surveys requested during each intervention. Second, from the third intervention, obtain a prediction of enrollment retention for at least the first four-month period. Based on the experimental design carried out in Mexico, the design proposal for the Technological University of Chile is also discussed.