Cross Disciplinary Perceptions of the Computational Thinking among Freshmen Engineering Students

In this study, we analyzed the perception of Computational Thinking among engineering students from three engineering disciplines (Electrical, Mechanical, and Civil) and correlated their performance with their discipline. The goal of this analysis is to determine whether structuring discipline-specific Computational Thinking courses can improve the retention or having a diverse group of students is more beneficial by allowing multidisciplinary interaction. This analysis was quantitatively verified by assessing the students' performance in over 40 different sections of Computing for Engineers course taught from Fall 2012 to Spring 2014. Our sample consisted of 861 students (142 Civil, 484 Mechanical, and 235 Electrical). We statistically analyzed students' performance in this multi-section course to conclude that the perception of Computational Thinking differs among different engineering disciplines. This indicates that structuring Computational Thinking courses for engineering students from different engineering disciplines and using diverse pedagogy approaches will ultimately help improve students’ retention.