Towards Identifying Core Computational Literacy Concepts for Inclusion in a First-year General Engineering Course

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an exploratory study to support efforts in revising first-year courses required for engineering students. It is common to include some form of introductory programming or spreadsheet computation topics in first-year courses. The inclusions of these topics is ostensibly to provide foundational computational skills needed in later courses. However, there are many challenges associated with teaching and learning these skills, the least of which is selecting which skills to include in the finite time allotted for a first-year introductory course that may also be tasked with teaching foundational problem solving and professional skills. This study is the first stage towards identifying a core set of skills for inclusion that would be relevant for most first-year students.