Voces y Silencios. Revista Latinoamericana de Educación

Voces silec. rev. latinoam. educ. | eISSN 2215-8421

Design of a Computational Thinking Course for Arts and Humanities Students at a Colombian University

No. 1 (2026-03-13)
https://doi.org/10.18175/VyS17.1.2026.5

Abstract

Studying how programming is taught and learned has become increasingly relevant in university academic spaces, especially in the face of interdisciplinary curriculum offerings such as electronic arts and digital humanities. This study uses a critical and participatory research model to analyze how Computational Thinking (CT) skills are used and developed in students from Arts and Humanities programs and proposes an introductory CT course specifically designed for this context. The data was obtained from interviews with Faculty professors about knowledge, development, and use of CT, and artifacts such as CT tests and reflections within a virtual Computational Thinking introductory course. The course addressed CT concepts and was structured around a transition from activities such as coding, decoding, and creating poems with algorithms, through text marking with HTML, to introductory programming using Processing in p5.js. The Faculty hold the a belief that CT is developed through the use of data editing and management software. The course results show that, initially, students had low performance in CT, but, throughout the course, student performance in tests improved significantly. This research concludes that the development of CT in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of a private Colombian university can be strengthened through an introductory course like the one proposed.

Keywords: art, computational thinking, education, higher education, humanities, programming, STEAM education

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