Reform on college fundamentals of computer course based on mobile computing

摘要

Fundamentals of Computer is a compulsory course of non-majors in many universities of China. In this paper, we explore the reform on this course for two goals. One is to redesign the teaching content: from operation oriented to computational thinking oriented. Computational thinking is one of the most important ability for 21st century and has become the primary goal of computer foundation education. New content covers the basic principles of computer science as well as the fundamental ways of thinking and problem solving with computer. The second goal is to improve teaching methods by leveraging mobile technology. We propose the use of MIT App Inventor, which is a simple tool for creating mobile applications for Android. Students with no prior knowledge of programming can create entertaining and socially useful applications with App Inventor while practicing computational thinking.