About Students’ Abstractions - Evaluation of Items Requiring Abstract Thinking Competence

Abstract

[EN] Abstract thinking is one of the most important competences in computer science. When starting my research, there was no complete definition of the competence nor was there a tool to assess first-semester students’ competence level. Thus, I developed a competence model of abstract thinking, which allowed me to derive an assessment tool. In this work, I will present first insights gained by analyzing the tests of 134 incoming students of computer science and scientific computing. The analysis confirms the assumption that incoming students often lack in this essential competence. Moreover, the overemphasis of the data aspect of classes in object oriented programming can be confirmed for university level education. Further investigations will follow. In the future, the insights gained can be used to develop teaching units or whole teaching concepts.