Beyond computer science: computational thinking across disciplines

In her influential CACM article, Jeannette Wing argues that computational thinking is an emerging basic skill that should become an integral part of every child’s education [14]. The potential impact of any approach for incorporating computational thinking into the curriculum is limited by the low enrollment in computing classes and the homogeneous population choosing these classes. While there are continuing efforts to draw students into computing courses, a complementary approach is to bring computational thinking into courses already taken by a diverse set of students. Because computing is transforming society and impacting many areas of study, providing students with meaningful exposure to computational thinking in other fields can be done without compromising existing learning goals.Modifying the K-12 curriculum to include a stronger emphasis on computational thinking has great potential. This effort is difficult in the U.S. however, since computer science is not a core high school topic and there are too few K-12 computing teachers to implement a national-scale computing requirement [2]. Projects that work to integrate computational thinking into existing discipline-specific courses show promise in overcoming these barriers [4, 5, 8, 15]. A comprehensive set of K-12 teacher resources has been developed jointly by the Computer Science Teachers Association and the International Society for Technology in Education [1]. The current emphasis by K-12 educators on 21st Century Skills provides a natural entry for incorporating computational thinking across the curriculum. The need for teaching computational thinking continues past secondary education. Spurred by funding from the National Science Foundation, researchers have considered how to revamp the undergraduate curriculum to place a greater emphasis on these concepts. A number of NSF-funded projects have focused on finding ways to enhance computational thinking in undergraduate courses outside the standard computing curriculum [3, 6, 9, 13].In this panel we discuss several projects that have worked to integrate computational thinking into the secondary and undergraduate curriculum in disciplines outside of computing such as art, astronomy, biology, economics, English, geology, government, kinesiology, history, music, and sociology. We will summarize the primary challenges and lessons learned. Following the description of our projects we will have an open discussion about overcoming challenges, what care should be taken to incorporate computing into other disciplines without sacrificing important traditions, and alternative and complementary approaches such as creating complete computational tracks within other disciplines