The Development of Educational Programming Software (CTCode) to Enhance Computational Thinking Skills for Novice Students

This study aimed to develop a programming learning software designed to enhance computational thinking skills among novice students and to evaluate the effectiveness of the CTCode software. The development of CTCode was guided by the Scrum and ASSURE models. The evaluation utilized an experimental method involving two groups of students, a treatment group and a control group, with 30 participants in each group. An assessment instrument consisting of a pre-test and post-test was used. The test consisted of 13 questions divided into three sections: Part A (objective questions), Part B (subjective questions), and Part C (code output). The results, analyzed using a simple t-test, yielded a t-value of 3.531. This indicates a significant difference in scores between students who used the newly developed software, based on computational thinking teaching and learning models, and those who used existing software. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that students enrolled in programming courses benefit from using CTCode. The software’s activities, such as quiz, drag and drop, and mix and match, incorporate metacognitive techniques and problem-solving strategies, which can effectively enhance students' computational thinking skills. The findings suggest that CTCode can serve as a valuable resource for fostering an engaging and structured learning environment in programming education.