Collaboration and Computational Thinking: A classroom structure

Building a classroom environment based on student-led, meaningful collaboration is an ideal being promoted by educators and administrators seeking to equip students with 21st century workforce skills. More and more often, teachers are challenged to design lessons that utilize students´ innate desire to communicate with one another rather than more traditional direct instruction. With a heavy focus on student-driven instruction and a reduced role for direct instruction, Carson Middle School´s Game Design I course is able to utilize collaboration as a means for allowing students to not only learn but master and retain Computational Thinking Patterns and apply them in formal summative assessments. Through the collection of these data points throughout the course of a semester of learning, an educator can fully appreciate the learning of Computational Thinking skills that occurs as students build a sequence of games and simulations.