research-article

Developing Industry-Relevant Higher Order Thinking Skills in Computing Students

Authors:

Charles Thevathayan,

Margaret HamiltonAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Pages 294 - 299

https://doi.org/10.1145/3341525.3387381

Published: 15 June 2020 Publication History

Abstract

A 2016 survey commissioned by the British Higher Education Council revealed CS graduates had one of the highest unemployment rates. Industry sources attribute this to a growing gap between employer expectations and university curriculum. This gap primarily consists of soft skills and higher-order thinking skills, which include the ability to analyse, synthesise, evaluate, critique and design. Technical job advertisements increasingly specify higher order thinking skills as entry requirements for graduates.

This paper presents the results of our work studying whether formative tasks can develop higher-order thinking skills. The formative tasks consisted of quizzes covering the first four levels of the Bloom's taxonomy. The higher-order thinking skills were measured based on the static and dynamic models students created for a real world problem, as part of the final exam. Our results reveal a strong correlation exists between application and analysis level quizzes and design activities needing higher-order thinking in the exam. Students repeating the quizzes several times also had better results than others in higher-order design skills. These results suggest that practising with well-constructed quizzes especially at the higher Bloom's level exercises the cognitive channels that help improve higher-order thinking skills.

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Cited By

Loksa DMargulieux LBecker BCraig MDenny PPettit RPrather J(2022)Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Programming Education: Theories and Exemplars of UseACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/348705022:4(1-31)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3487050
Epinasti GY. Slamet SYamtinah S(2021)Teacher's Perception towards Assessing of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) in Elementary SchoolsProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Learning Innovation and Quality Education10.1145/3516875.3516980(1-6)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3516875.3516980

Index Terms

Developing Industry-Relevant Higher Order Thinking Skills in Computing Students
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing industry

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cover image ACM Conferences

ITiCSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 2020

615 pages

ISBN:9781450368742

DOI:10.1145/3341525

General Chairs:
Michail Giannakos
NTNU, Norway
,
Guttorm Sindre
Excited/NTNU, Norway
,
Program Chairs:
Andrew Luxton-Reilly
University of Auckland, NZ
,
Monica Divitini
NTNU, Norway

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

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Published: 15 June 2020

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ITiCSE '20: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 15 - 19, 2020

Trondheim, Norway

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Cited By

Loksa DMargulieux LBecker BCraig MDenny PPettit RPrather J(2022)Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Programming Education: Theories and Exemplars of UseACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/348705022:4(1-31)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3487050
Epinasti GY. Slamet SYamtinah S(2021)Teacher's Perception towards Assessing of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) in Elementary SchoolsProceedings of the 5th International Conference on Learning Innovation and Quality Education10.1145/3516875.3516980(1-6)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3516875.3516980

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