e
Project-Based Pedagogy
Project-based learning (PBL) integrates instructional activities within projects where students drive investigations of substantive questions \cite{Krajcik_2005}. PBL is popular in classrooms, but there are questions of its utility in other settings, especially in MOOCs, which typically adopt a didactic, lecture-based format with instructional videos, quizzes and activities, discussions, and graded assignments. However, some early work has found positive attitudes among learners in a project-based MOOC, as well as the importance of learner autonomy in these contexts \cite{Barak_2017}. Within the context of CT instruction, PBL approaches have been well documented and have been shown to invoke students' creativity and sense of responsibility in university settings \cite{Hsu_2018}.
The Problem Solving Using Computational Thinking MOOC centers much of its pedagogy around a final project that learners must create using the tools and techniques they’ve learned throughout the course, iterate on this project until they arrive at a final algorithmic solution, and then submit their iterations and algorithm for peer evaluation while they also evaluate other learners’ projects. This approach allows learners a level of flexibility rarely found at the scale of MOOCs. This flexibility also means that final projects vary widely in the real-life problems they try to tackle.
Epidemiology Case Study
Using case studies is a way to ground CT in real-life scenarios rather than presenting these skills as abstract and detached from reality. This provides a concrete, actionable foundation for CT that can more effectively lead to learning, retention, and application \cite{Weintrop_2015}.
For this purpose, the Computational Thinking course revolves around a series of three case studies. First is an airport surveillance case study where an expert explains how computational thinking is used to identify potentially suspicious activities in airport surveillance videos. Another case focuses on various ways that computing power can be leveraged to find and prevent possible attempts at human trafficking. For each of these case studies, learners are asked to download a graphic organizer template and fill it out with the case’s details, including multiple iterations of problem identification, decomposition, pattern recognition, and abstraction.