Analysis of linkages between an unplugged activity and the development of computational thinking

Unplugged activities have been one approach to introduce computational thinking (CT) to students before any form of coding is involved. This paper reports on a study that examines the evaluation of the types of CT skills inculcated through an unplugged activity. Students in a grade 9 class were engaged in an unplugged activity on sorting before being asked to represent their understanding in the form of pseudo-English, flowchart or Python code. The assessment of CT skills comprises the aspects of decomposition, algorithmic design, generalization, abstraction and evaluation. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) was used to take a closer look at the unplugged CT activity and the subsequent artifact production. Such a QCA analysis can be used to inform a framework for designing instruction and tasks to target and teach certain types of CT knowledge in novice programmers, as well as for assessing an instruction package as to what CT knowledge is being covered.