RUME 26
2024
Omaha, Nebraska
Exploring How Undergraduate Students Engage in Computational Thinking with Data
Page: 1242
Modern statistics education requires that we support students in building powerful and productive ways of computational thinking. In this paper, we seek to understand the ways of computational thinking that undergraduate students employ as they engage with data. To address this question, we administered task-based interviews with three participants using the R programming language. Problem-solving approaches focusing on formatting data and efficient coding emerged as early aspects of student thinking. We are still reviewing interview transcripts and intend to compare our findings with existing frameworks from the literature, working towards a framework highlighting beneficial ways of thinking. This work is part of a larger study with additional tasks and additional individuals with varying levels of experience and expertise.