DISSECT: Exploring the relationship between computational thinking and English literature in K-12 curricula

DISSECT (DIScover SciEnce through Computational Thinking) is a project aimed at introducing students to computer science principles by establishing computational thinking (CT) as a problem-solving technique within middle school and high school Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. While DISSECT has shown successful integration of CT into middle school and high school STEM curricula, illustrating the pervasive nature of CT, a question remained; “can CT also be infused into humanities courses (e.g., English, Art, History) in addition to scientific courses (e.g., Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science)?” The answer is positive. The objective of this paper is to present one approach to bridge the gap between CT and humanities through the curriculum of a 12th-grade English Literature course. The course blends CT practices with composition and literature to provide students with the ability to write critical and comparative analyses of selected literature. This paper will describe multiple modules that integrate computational thinking into the course, and discuss the results and assessment tools used to measure student competency in computational thinking.