Software Education and Business Model for Enforcing the Computational Thinking Ability

2-1 Software Education and Computational Thinking

The textbook definition of software education is defined as "education to cultivate talents to solve problems through computational thinking". The computational thinking here starts with computer scientists thinking about problem solving and the basic problem solving techniques associated with it. The programming process for solving everyday problems with software can be summarized as the followings.

• 1. Understanding and analyzing the problem accurately (Problem understanding and analysis)
• 2. Extracting the key elements from the problem, redefining the problem with the extracted elements (Abstraction and modeling)
• 3. Designing the methods and procedures for problem solving (Algorithm)
• 4. Writing a program so that the computer can do the work according to the designed method and procedures (Writing the source program) and confirm that the result is correct (Automation).
• 5. If the result is incorrect, find out where it went wrong in the previous step and correct the error (Error correction)
• 6. Repeating the remaining steps until the desired program is completed (Debugging)

The ability to perform these series of the processes is called computational thinking. The thinking model of it is shown in <Table 1>.

Table 1.

Computational Thinking Models

2-2 Foreign Software Education Cases

The United States educates the computer science subjects at Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. In the first stage, they learn basic principles of information science through computational thinking, experience how much computer is used and important in everyday life, and link with various curriculum and induce learning and creation. In the second step, computational thinking is used as a tool for problem solving. They use communication, and collaboration, as well as the use of computational thinking in learning, creation, and inquiry. In the third stage, three subdivision processes are provided to deepen learning, solve real-world problems using computational thinking, and carry out the projects together to encourage collaboration and effective communication. The difference from Korea is that the curriculum includes community, global, and ethical influences. The collaboration is the most important thing in creating software because nobody can do programming by oneself.

No matter how skillful a programmer is, it is a reality that it is difficult to evolve and develop in the market with the value of a commodity. In other words, it is necessary to communicate with many people until one software is created. In some cases, meetings that coordinate and prioritize their work take longer to design and make the actual software code. Therefore, it is necessary to look community awareness in understanding digital world.

From september 2014, the UK announced a new national curriculum reorganization that would teach programming as an integral part of new computing subjects that replace traditional ICT education at all levels of education between the ages of 5 and 16 years. It consists of 4 steps and the computing subjects are included in the basic curriculum, and the students study computing for 11 years from elementary to middle school. The goals of the computing curriculum are largely captured by three computer science, information processing technologies, and digital literacy skills. It is especially noteworthy that it provides creation, reuse, revision, and modification of digital artifacts to improve them during the course of computing. We are going to take a look at expanding to the point of creating and modifying current softwares and providing them to users.

This process involves experiencing a series of processes where softwares are created and communicated to users to interact with real users and make further improvements. The UK understands technical safeguards on information protection and includes how to see how it is changing, in the field of ethics and personal information protection. Currently, it is managed by strictly limiting personal data protection act, but there is still much information available to software programmers. Therefore, educating the security consciousness and ethical awareness of information is of the utmost importance from the point of view of the providers of software, like the UK.

India taught coding in C++ and Java in high school and has already become a software powerhouse. Estonia, the hometown of Skype, the world's largest internet phone, has become a jurisdiction of coding education with mandatory coding education for all students since the 90s[7]. The students who have difficulty coding directly learn the coding principles using multicolored codes, and see the strong commitment of the Estonian government to draw one's attention to the world of coding. Since december 2001, China has set up a pilot institute for seminars at 35 universities nationwide including Tsinghua university, Beijing university and Harbin institute of technology[4]. In this way, the world is looking for the future of the fourth industrial revolution in education. In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, what is needed is a national education system capable of cultivating talented people who can analyze data and extract value[5].

2-3 Digital Storytelling and Flipped Learning

Stories have been important teaching and learning materials and methods since ancient times. In particular, fun, an element of story, can be a factor that allows learners to voluntarily participate in the learning process and immerse themselves in activities. The story that can become an important material in teaching and learning has been reborn as a combination of digital technology including various multimedia elements such as sound, video, animation, and game through ICT growth.

Flipped learning is a way to 'flip' an existing method. Before real class, lecture videos for the students to study online are provided, and the students can solve problems that the students can not solve and the more intensive learning activities are conducted through discussions with the peer learners or with the assistance of assistants and instructors. Like these, they can do it all by themselves. When all of them are together, it is the most efficient way to do activities that can be done together. This is efficient in time as well as streamlining. The passive learners of the class actively become the subjects of the active class, and the supervisor who is the control supervisor or the knowledge communicator plays the role of assisting the learning of the students. In other words, the role of the teacher in the education of the flipped learning method must become the facilitator.

3-1 Thinking and Coding Procedure

Fun is a factor that enables learners to voluntarily participate in the learning process and engage in activities. In this educational model, we intend to foster software capability, that is, computational thinking, by combining human factors called storytelling with coding. By using the familiar stories that users are already familiar with, it is possible to develop various creation according to the selection factors of the coding as well as the fun factors, thereby helping to improve the creativity. Thinking and coding procedure is a process of decomposing story into each individual process, recognizing repeated pattern of problem to be solved in each process, abstraction into main concept to reduce complexity of problem, and a step of automating the coding process by using a computer.

To link thinking and coding processes, it is necessary to format the story, which is called story coding. The story coding is a process of fusing the coding based on a funny story that everyone knows, such as the sun and the moon, the rabbit and turtle, and the baby rat. Creativity can be improved by expressing the action of a scene or an object realistically by animating the action of the scene or an object to express an interesting event in the storyline of the story, or by creating the ending of another creative story in an optional situation. In addition, in the process of conflict resolution and development, the game can be fused to move away from one-sided fairy tale and improve the thinking ability of computing by combining various methods in the form of a smart book that can interact with each other. Figure 1 is a part of story development and coding of “Cat school” using Scratch. Such a coding method is not a one-sided tool-based education, but rather a method that can progressively improve the thinking power of a computer by finding a portion to be coded by oneself and accumulating experience of problem solving.

Fig. 1.

Story development using Scratch

3-2 A Progressive Convergence of Coding Tools

The progressive convergence education model of the program tool is gradual deepening by the process of 1~5 steps which fused each independent tool. Figure 2 is a list of the programs that can be used for convergence. For progressive convergence there are so many methods like the followings. Unplugged computing and algorithm for first step, relatively easy visual(block) programming for education, unplugged programming and algorithm for second step, visual programming, unplugged and physical programming for third step, visual and text programming for fourth step, and real and general development programming language, text and visual programming, unplugged programming, algorithm and physical programming for fifth step. These models give flexibility by allowing users to access various languages or to select and integrate a specific language they are familiar with. Also, the advantages and disadvantages of each language can be learned by themselves and the computational thinking can be improved. The result of education is to make digital storybooks. Therefore, this study uses this digital storybook as a business model to be discussed in the next chapter. This digital storybook creates an inflow customer of the platform. Many customer subscription can lead to advertising revenue, off-line training in the form of lectures, and support from key partners.

Fig. 2.

Different tools for computational thinking

3-3 Business Model for Computational Thinking

In this paper, a software education business model using incremental convergence education to improve computational thinking power is shown in table 2 with 9 blocks proposed by [9].

Table 2.

Business Model for Computational Thinking

- Customer Segments : To build an effective business model, we need to understand which customers the company needs to serve. The different types of customer segments are the followings. A person who wants to be a software education specialist or a coding educator, after-school teacher and who wants to produce digital storytelling contents exists as a productive customer and a consumer who wants to see digital storybook as a result of simple education. Learning of basic tool is based on learning through free video lectures provided by the platform.

- Value Propositions : They combine storytelling with software education to create easy and fun learning, and the results created in the course offer new business opportunities. The value propositions may be that quantitative ones are price and efficiency, and qualitative ones are overall customer experience and outcome.

- Channels : A company can deliver its value proposition to its targeted customers through different channels such as web site, SNS channel and off-line. Effective channels deploy the company value propositions in a fast, efficient and cost-effective way.

- Customer Relationships : A good customer relationship can lead to the success of the business model. We use growth hacking, an online marketing technique that monitors and immediately reflects improvements in products and services through off-line lectures and on internet. Different forms of customer relationships include personal assistance, dedicated personal assistance, self service, automated services, communities and co-creation.

- Revenue Streams : This means the way a company makes income from each customer segment. Revenue through off-line lectures, content production import orders, and sales of storyboard kits is expected.

- Key Resources : This menas the resources that are necessary to create value for the customer. It has human, technical and intellectual resources with university lecturers and professors in the computer field.

- Key Activities : This is the most important activities in executing a company's value proposition. Story analysis, game element analysis, storytelling coding training, and software education video production are used to select familiar fairy tales and stories and apply them to coding education.

- Key Partnerships : To optimize operations and reduce risks of a business model, they usually cultivate buyer-supplier relationships so they can focus on their core activity. These are after-school coding experts, education support offices, fairy tale writers, part time lecturers and character designers.

- Cost Structures : This represents the most significant monetary results while operating under different business models. These are video production costs, personnel expenses, and the cost of holding a camp or storytelling coding competition.