TY - GEN
T1 - Development and validation of the computational thinking concepts and skills test
AU - Peteranetz, Markeya S.
AU - Morrow, Patrick M.
AU - Soh, Leen Kiat
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
PY - 2020/2/26
Y1 - 2020/2/26
N2 - Calls for standardized and validated measures of computational thinking have been made repeatedly in recent years. Still, few such tests have been created and even fewer have undergone rigorous psychometric evaluation and been made available to researchers. The purpose of this study is to report our work in developing and validating a test of computational thinking concepts and skills and to compare different scoring methods for the test. This computational thinking exam is intended to be used in computing education research as a common measure of computational thinking so that the research community will be able to make more meaningful comparisons across samples and studies. The Computational Thinking Concepts and Skills Test (CTCAST) was administered to students in several courses, evaluated and revised, and then administered to another group of students. Part of the revision included changing half of the items to a multiple-select format. The test scores using the three scoring methods were compared to each other and to scores on a different test of core computer science knowledge. Results indicate the CTCAST and the test of core computer science knowledge measure similar, but not identical, aspects of students' knowledge and skills, and that itemlevel statistics vary according to the scoring method that is used. Recommendations for using and scoring the test are presented.
AB - Calls for standardized and validated measures of computational thinking have been made repeatedly in recent years. Still, few such tests have been created and even fewer have undergone rigorous psychometric evaluation and been made available to researchers. The purpose of this study is to report our work in developing and validating a test of computational thinking concepts and skills and to compare different scoring methods for the test. This computational thinking exam is intended to be used in computing education research as a common measure of computational thinking so that the research community will be able to make more meaningful comparisons across samples and studies. The Computational Thinking Concepts and Skills Test (CTCAST) was administered to students in several courses, evaluated and revised, and then administered to another group of students. Part of the revision included changing half of the items to a multiple-select format. The test scores using the three scoring methods were compared to each other and to scores on a different test of core computer science knowledge. Results indicate the CTCAST and the test of core computer science knowledge measure similar, but not identical, aspects of students' knowledge and skills, and that itemlevel statistics vary according to the scoring method that is used. Recommendations for using and scoring the test are presented.
KW - Assessment
KW - Computational thinking
KW - Multiple-select items
KW - Test development
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081625748&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/3328778.3366813
DO - 10.1145/3328778.3366813
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85081625748
T3 - SIGCSE 2020 - Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
SP - 926
EP - 932
BT - SIGCSE 2020 - Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
T2 - 51st ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2020
Y2 - 11 March 2020 through 14 March 2020
ER -