COMPUTATIONAL THINKING SKILLS NEED OF COMPUTING STUDENTS IN PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH SOUTH, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study determined the computational thinking skills need for computing students in programming environment in Federal Universities, South-South Nigeria. Two specific objectives, two research questions and two research hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted descriptive survey design. A simple random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of two hundred and thirty (230) respondents comprising one hundred and eighty-three (183) final year Computer Science students and forty-seven (47) lecturers were drawn from the population of five hundred and eighty (580) in the eight Federal Universities in south-south, Nigeria using Taro Yamane formula. The researcher developed an instrument for the study titled “Computational Thinking Skills Need for Computing Students in Programming Environment Questionnaire (COTSNCSPEQ)” which was used for data collection. The instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts, a reliability of 0.83 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha method. The instrument was administered with the help of research assistants. The data were analyzed using SPSS statistical package. Mean was used to answer research questions while independent t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that computing students need problem formulation skill and recursive skills for computational thinking. Based on the result of the findings, the researcher concluded that computing students should be trained in order to improve their skills in problem formulation and recursive towards computational thinking in programming environment. The researcher recommended among others that university lecturers and computing students should be encouraged to put more effort in improving their skills in problem formulation and recursive skills for effective computational thinking in computing environment.