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126 11 MULTIDIMENSIONAL EXPANSION OF THE ALGORYTHMICS... The learning steps that a course is built with can be differentiated by their input, display, and playback type. These can be defined dynamically by the administrators or teachers, with the possibility of managing the level of user interaction. During these courses, users encounter difficulties, which could result in making mistakes or requesting help. The software registers all these events. 11.2.3 Levels of interactivity The renewed environment operates on three levels of interactivity. — 0 interactivity (no interactivity): the user is an independent observer; s/ he can attend to the animation and the video without any interruption; — &% interactivity (half interactivity): the user is partially involved; at some specific key moments, s/he needs to answer some questions or continue the animation flow; — 1 interactivity (full interactivity): the user needs to control the whole animation; s/he is the conductor of the algorithm, the embodiment of operations. In the next chapter, we will focus explicitly on this new feature of the AlgoRythmics environment. 11.3 Promoting computational thinking in the extended AlgoRythmics environment In their endeavour to define CT, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2020) and the American Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA, 2020) identified nine related concepts suitable to be promoted within the framework of K-12 education: data collection, data analysis, data representation, problem decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, automation, parallelization, and simulation. ISTE also adds an operational definition for CT as a problem-solving process with characteristics such as (ISTE, 2020): — formulating problems so their solutions can be represented as computational step sequences (skill 1); — logically organizing and analysing data (skill 2); — representing data through abstractions (modelling, simulations) (skill 3); — automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (representing them as algorithms) (skill 4); — identifying, analysing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of introducing concepts such as algorithm time and space complexity (skill 5);
