The interest-driven creator theory and computational thinking

There is a growing interest for Computational Thinking (CT) for the last decade. Most studies focus on teaching CT skills in K-12 level. In higher education, applying CT methods over all disciplines still needs cross institute movement, proper teaching tools and assessment procedure. In this paper we discuss the potential of applying CT methods in the mathematics courses at university level. With the inspiration of the Interest-Driven Creator (IDC) theory, we suggest that applying CT methods in mathematics benefits students’ understanding of concepts and overcomes the drawbacks of traditional pedagogy. We study the case of introducing the limit of a sequence, which is a fundamental concept in calculus. An algorithm, inspired by the ε-N definition, is designed to find suitable N given a specific ε with exhaustion methods. Based on the algorithm designed, a game that help to introduce the ε-N definition of the limit of a sequence is presented as an example. The game would be developed on mobile devices for easy accessibility and for catering the trend of mobile device. Copyright © 2016 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.