Design Thinking Applications in Teaching Programming to Gifted Students

Abstract

The study aimed to present suggestions for how a design thinking (DT) approach can be applied in the processes of teaching programming to gifted students and to reveal its effects on the teaching process. The case study method was used. 5 different DT tasks were defined to create solutions for an unstructured problem by using programming tools and DT processes. DT activities were applied to 25 gifted students (13 girls, 12 boys) at the Science and Art Center (BİLSEM) in the city center through the summer term. Data were collected through interviews, observation forms, and the DT Rubric which was developed by the researchers. The findings showed that gifted students improved their DT skills to a certain level, learned the academic content, enjoyed the process itself, and experienced some problems working in teams. At the end of the teaching process, the students emphasized that a good designer should be a respectful person who can work well within a team. Additionally, according to the students' views, different programming tools and environments namely Scratch, Arduino IDE and Lego Mindstorms EV3 can be used in the prototyping phase of the DT processes. Updating DT tasks to include DT mindsets and taking into account the leadership qualities of gifted students during the implementation process may be suggested.