Reducing abstraction level when learning computability theory concepts
Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Introduction To Automata Theory, Languages, And Computation
Introduction To Automata Theory, Languages, And Computation
On the achievements of high school students studying computational models
Proceedings of the 9th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Reductive thinking in undergraduate CS courses
Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Reductive thinking in a quantitative perspective: the case of the algorithm course
Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Reduction in CS: A (Mostly) Quantitative Analysis of Reductive Solutions to Algorithmic Problems
Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC)
Pseudo abstract composition: the case of language concatenation
Proceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Hi-index | 0.00 |
Abstraction has been the focus of many researches in mathematics education and to some extent in computer science education. Abstract thinking characterizes the theoretical foundations of computer science, where reduction is one important abstract thinking pattern. In a previous work, we discussed the issue of reductive thinking among high school students in relation to computational models -- a theoretical unit. This unit requires abstract thinking in many aspects. Our findings in relation to reductive thinking showed that many students preferred direct, non-reductive solutions, even if reductive solutions could have significantly decreased the design complexity of the solution. This study motivated the current study where we examine the issue of reductive thinking among university students. The findings of this preliminary study are demonstrated by students' solutions to questions in assignments given in the computational models course. We found that even among university students in a very prestigious academic institution with very high entrance requirements abstraction is a real obstacle as reduction is not easily understood and used. This encourages us to further investigate this phenomenon.