The interdisciplinary implementation of poly-universe to promote computational thinking: Teaching examples from biological, physical, and digital education in Austrian secondary schools.

Today's teaching and didactical methods are progressively aiming to integrate digital technologies, computational thinking (CT), and basic computer science concepts into other subjects. An innovative and creative way of combining and integrating CT and teaching cross-curricular skills without digital devices is to include the game Poly-Universe (PolyUni). According to previous research, the game is expected to have a positive effect on visual perceptual progress, including isolation, and the development of shape-background skills.

Combined Effects of Block-Based Programming and Physical Computing on Primary Students' Computational Thinking Skills.

Basic Digital Education (BDE) is already planned to be integrated with the forthcoming curriculum for Austrian primary schools (6-10 years) as it was already implemented for lower secondary schools (10-14 years) in 2018. BDE includes the most essential and novel developments of Computational Thinking (CT), which are fundamentally responsible for nurturing students' problem-solving skills. Thus, evaluating teaching materials, scaffolding guidelines, and assessments is becoming increasingly important for the successful implementation of CT in Austrian classrooms.