In recent years, many initiatives have aimed to develop basic computational thinking skills. Despite the popularity of online platforms for early programmers, we still lack detailed information to analyze how these skills are acquired. In the present study we analyzed clickstream data from 3,355 participants enrolled in several Computational Thinking workshops using Kodetu, an online platform with fine grained logging features. Participants used Kodetu's coding blocks to solve challenges of increasing difficulty while we gathered their clickstream in the platform. Here, we present our findings after evaluating these data in regards of participants' characteristics (age, sex, previous knowledge), similarity with previously submitted solutions, and degree of discrepancy from the optimal solution. To facilitate collaboration with other researchers in this area, we released our dataset under an open license. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest Computational Thinking-related datasets publicly available.

Resilience thinking is critical for improving disaster preparedness, response, and adaptation. While there are several strategies focused on assessing resilience capacity in human communities, there are few strategies focused on fostering resilience thinking. Game-based learning is an active and immersive teaching strategy that can foster complex skills such as resilience. However, this field needs further research in terms of its potential to strengthen community resilience to disasters. In this paper, we validated a serious game to foster community resilience. We present the collaborative creation process for the development of the board game Costa Resiliente, and its subsequent migration into a video game. We have developed an experimental study to evaluate the contributions of the mobile game against the board game. The result is a technological tool based on scientific knowledge to foster resilience thinking in coastal human communities exposed to hazards. The board game was developed using data from local research on community resilience, and from experts in emergency planning and developing games collected in focus groups. The board game’s effect on fostering resilience thinking was validated with school students from a coastal town. During the migration process into a video game, we used a design thinking methodological approach for the co-creation of audiovisual elements, in which beneficiaries participate actively and early. Through this approach, visual and auditory elements that are familiar to coastal communities were integrated into the video game elements. Our study indicates that game-based learning is a useful approach to foster resilience thinking, and that a better gaming experience can be provided by a video game. The potential of this video game for educating young age groups about community resilience is further discussed.

Critical thinking consists in analysing and evaluating the coherence of reasoning. This ability is crucial when we talk about software quality (SQ). SQ is closely related with the engineer’s ability to judge and discriminate between solutions correctly, so students are required to analyse, evaluate and draw conclusions. Critical thinking, therefore, becomes a crucial part of the training of software engineers. The problem arises from the diversity of proposals and the lack of rigour in existing experiences, making it difficult to find specific recommendations, especially in online contexts. This article reports a systematic mapping study (SMS), the purpose of which was to detect, organise and characterise specific dimensions in online teaching-learning of critical thinking for software engineering. Based on the results of the SMS, we propose a preliminary framework for the evaluation of critical thinking in the training of software engineers in a context of online higher education. It is expected that this proposal will serve as a basis for instructors of the discipline when evaluating critical thinking in a context of online teaching.

Requirements prioritization is an activity aimed at determining the essential requirements to include in a software release. Although there are several prioritization methods to systematize this task, there are still unresolved challenges. Existing methods do not guarantee that requirements prioritization meets stakeholder expectations and goals. This is because most prioritization methods operate by considering only quantitative information, making it difficult to formally capture stakeholder interests and perspectives that can rather be made explicit in qualitative terms. Likewise, methods including qualitative information only consider elements associated with benefit estimation, that is, positive aspects of the project, but neglect costs or negative aspects. As a result, the prioritization process is driven by a partial view of constraints. Such methods also fail at capturing and combining expert knowledge that decision-makers can bring into the decision-making process. In this research, we propose a novel method for software requirements prioritization, which facilitates incorporating experts’ qualitative assessment at the outset of the prioritization process and considers both benefit and cost constraints. Details of the method are presented, together with a case study describing a real application scenario. Recommendations and guidelines regarding the application of the method are proposed based on the results of the case study.