An Investigation of Undergraduates’ Computational Thinking in a Sophomore-Level Biomedical Engineering Course

Abstract

This research study presents our work focused on studying the development of introductory computational thinking in undergraduate biomedical engineering students. In response to the growing computational intensity of the healthcare industry, biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate education is starting to emphasize computation and computational thinking. Computational thinking is a way of thinking that uses concepts and methodologies of computing to solve problems in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subjects. In broader terms, computational thinking is not only associated with using computational tools but also with the thought process of solving a problem by data representation, problem decomposition, and algorithm design. Despite being so important, there is little research work or information available on the development of computational thinking in BME undergraduate students. Our research focuses on how BME undergraduate students develop computational thinking skills while performing group activities related to problem-solving. In order to conduct this study, we incorporate a teaching methodology that prompts computational thinking in a thermodynamics course being taught at a public mid-western university to approximately 120 sophomore students. We observe classroom activities involving analytical problem solving followed by pseudo code generation for computational coding. In order to investigate computational thinking, we collect classroom observations of small groups of students as they come up with a solution to an analytical problem with each other. We complement the observation notes of the classroom activities with follow up semi structured interviews with individual students from five groups. Thematic analysis of the student interviews is used in order to analyze student responses towards the incorporation of computation intensive teaching methodology. This Work in Progress helps us expand our understanding of computational thinking development and the challenges involved in performing computational thinking activity in BME undergraduate students.