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Cultivating Computational Thinking in Early Years Through Board Games. The Cthink.it Approach

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Smart Mobile Communication & Artificial Intelligence (IMCL 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 937))

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Abstract

Computational Thinking (CT) was brought up originally in the 1950s as the notion of using structured or algorithmic thinking. It refers to a specific set of mental skills used to formulate solutions to problems by converting given inputs to produce appropriate outputs while following detailed algorithms to perform this process. CT is broadly defined as a combination of thinking processes which include abstraction, algorithm design, decomposition, sequencing, pattern recognition and data representation. The prominence of CT in education has been steadily increasing. Lately, the corresponding research is focusing also on early years (starting from the age of 4). Towards this direction and in combination with the blooming of Game-based and gamified learning approaches, this paper discusses the design of a board game addressed to children 4–8 years old, for cultivating CT skills. A detailed roadmap on the design of the game, including a systematic literature review is presented in this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work is funded by the Eramus+ programme, key action 2, Partnerships for cooperation (Proj No: 2022–1-MT01-KA220-SCH-000086903).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Macedonia, Macedonia, Greece

    Tharrenos Bratitsis, Maria Tsapara & Kiriaki Melliou

  2. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Leonard Busuttil, Diane Vassallo & James Callus

  3. Advancis - Business Services, Lda, Matosinhos, Portugal

    Gonçalo Meireles

  4. Anatolia College, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Iro Koliakou

  5. Chiswick House School, San Ġwann, Malta

    Nabil Tarraf Kojok

  6. Projeto Scholé, Lda, Matosinhos, Portugal

    Sofia Sousa

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  1. Tharrenos Bratitsis
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  2. Maria Tsapara
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Correspondence to Tharrenos Bratitsis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CTI Global, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

    Michael E. Auer

  2. Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos

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Bratitsis, T. et al. (2024). Cultivating Computational Thinking in Early Years Through Board Games. The Cthink.it Approach. In: Auer, M.E., Tsiatsos, T. (eds) Smart Mobile Communication & Artificial Intelligence. IMCL 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 937. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56075-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56075-0_8

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