Gamifying Computational Thinking Skills with a Community of Practice of Teachers

This design case describes an online synchronous teacher training on computational thinking (CT) skills for a community of practice (CoP) of in-service teachers in India. The training used gamification, reflection, and localization as instructional strategies. The purpose of this training was to help in-service K-12 teachers identify subject-specific examples of CT that they could then integrate into an online teaching context. The PRADA model of CT constructs was used as a framework for this training. The design decisions were guided by the instructional design theory of gamification and CoP theory in situated cognition. The training was developed using Google suite tools to ensure ease of use and access, minimal technical onboarding, and no cost of technology integration. A two-pronged approach was taken post-evaluation of the first iteration leading to remediation and second-iteration design.