Design of CoTAS: Automated computational thinking assessment system

Computational thinking (CT) is widely accepted as a fundamental practice for equipping students to formulate and solve problems in the digital era. Many countries are adopting mandatory curricula for computer science (CS) lessons and CT education at high school. However, assessing how well students perform in CT activities is hard. Teachers face many challenges in the assessment process, because there is a limited number of resources for assessment and a lack of online access to resources. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to support teachers by developing an effective automated Computational Thinking Assessment System (CoTAS) for instructing and evaluating CT skills of high school students in Python course. CoTAS facilitates the assessment of students’ CT skills. Supported by CoTAS, teachers will be able to determine students’ CT skill levels and shape their learning by continuously observing students’ individual levels of development during the learning process. Teachers can access different resources to evaluate CT concepts, practices and perspectives. CoTAS can provide automatic feedback, so teachers can guide students directly when misconceptions arise. Moreover, CoTAS offers multi-disciplinary assessment tools which can be used not only in the programming lessons, but also in other disciplines such as science, mathematics and social sciences in which CT skills are integrated.