The Center for Computational Thinking (CCT) was established with IT Vest funding in 2018, and serves as a research collaboration as well as a consultative unit to the Study board of Communication and Digital Media at Aalborg University’s department of Communication and Psychology. Computational thinking has been identified as a central perspective to be considered not only in the departments Cand.IT Master programs but also in the Bachelor program in Communication and Digital Media. The expectation is that CT has the potential to increase the students employability, as well as ad nuances to their perspectives on the fundamental academic competences acquired through their studies.

Research wise, CCT places a particular focus on the potential of CT in higher education, especially on educational practices in a Scandinavian context. Springboarding on the results and experiences gathered from previously concluded and ongoing CT development projects, one of the main goals is to develop a collective definition and curriculum regarding CT and how it is conducted within the various study lines.

Overall, CCT plays a supporting role when scaling the cand.it study lines within the department of communication and digital media, this goal will be initiated with increased focus on information architecture and information studies and result in an additionally streamlined curriculum among these study lines.

“Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world by the middle of the 21st century. By fundamental, I mean as fundamental as reading, writing and arithmetic.” (Jeannette Wing, Computational Thinking 10 Years Later, 2016)

Computational thinking is a thought-process that revolves around problem solving, much related to specifically solving problems by programming or using technology. This concept incorporates the ability to deconstruct a problem into smaller and thus more manageable segments, this part of CT is commonly referred to as decomposition. It utilizes abstraction to filter unnecessary information and data from the meaningful data, which is exemplified and exercised when qualitative research has been conducted, as an example. Algorithms is another key component of CT since it is about organizing and structuring an approach to gain results. Recognizing patterns when analyzing data or information through pattern recognition is also an important feature of CT. The last of the main competences of within CT is evaluation and this is the ability to evaluate on the success or failure of a the problem solving process.