Computational thinking and scientific exam problems
As part of preparing students for external examinations, I have been asking them about how they approach answering exam-style questions. It is something that we as educators sometimes take for granted that approaching the solving of these types of questions is actually a skill all in itself. From the student's feedback, it was clear they were lacking a clear strategy in tackling these types of questions. One approach that I have been introducing the students to the use of computational thinking to develop a strategy to solve long answer style questions, especially those involving calculations. Before a problem can be tackled, the problem itself and the ways in which it could be solved need to be understood. Computational thinking allows us to do this. Computational thinking allows us to take a complex problem, understand what the problem is and develop possible solutions. There are four key techniques to computational thinking: Decomposition - breaking down a problem into s