M.A. Theses
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Browsing M.A. Theses by Subject "Information technology -- Middle school students."
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Item Developing middle school students’ computational thinking skills using unplugged computing activities(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Delal, Havva.; Öner, Diler.This study investigated the role of unplugged computing activities on developing computational thinking (CT) skills of 6th grade students. The unplugged computing classroom activities were based on Bebras challenges. Bebras, an international organization, aims to promote informatics and CT among school students. Participants of the study were 6th grade (n=24 female and n=29 male) students from two public middle schools in Istanbul. The activities in the study were divided into three groups as “easy”, “medium” and “difficult” according to the difficulty levels as defined in the Bebras competition, which were selected so that each group involved four components of CT skills found to be common in CT definitions in the literature -- abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic thinking, and generalization. To evaluate students’ CT skills, two equivalent tests were prepared. Questions in these tests were also selected from Bebras and translated into Turkish. Also, questions in the tests have three difficulty levels and covers the four major CT skills as in the activities. These tests were used as a pre-test and post-test, and their results were compared to assess students’ CT skill development. The CT Scale (Korkmaz et al., 2016) was also given to the participants at the end of the instruction. The results of the study showed that students’ post-test scores were significantly higher than pre-test scores. However, there was not any significant differences between students’ scores in terms of gender, and there was no interaction effect between students’ scores and their gender. In terms of the CT Scale results, there was no significant difference between male and female students’ self-evaluation of CT skillItem Using unplugged and block-based activities through video conferencing to develop secondary schoolers’ computational thinking skills(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) Çil Bilgin, Elif.; Kartal, Günizi.The aim of this study is to design, develop, and evaluate a learning module that brings together unplugged computing with block-based activities to develop Computational Thinking (CT) and arouse interest in computer science, especially for children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. A mixed method study was used to investigate quantitative and qualitative data. Participants of the study were secondary school students (n=62) from different public schools. 8-week learning module consists of 8 unplugged and 7 block-based activities that were implemented through video conferencing. A CT skills test consisting of 12 questions selected from Bebras tasks and 3 questions developed by the researcher, the Self Efficacy Perception Scale for Computational Thinking Skills developed by Gülbahar et al., (2018) and the rubrics for the assessment of the students’ final Scratch projects were used as data collection instruments. Feedback questionnaires and interviews with mentors were carried out for examining the students’ learning. The results showed a statistically significant increase in the students’ CT skills and self-efficacy perceptions. Based on an analysis of the Scratch projects, most frequent components were events, conditional statements, and loops and the overwhelming majority of the students used an incorporated theme in their projects, which were also functional. The qualitative findings demonstrated that the majority of the students learned about Computer Science, and gained new skills such as basics of coding, and coding in Scratch.