Sports Analytics as a Context for Computational Thinking in K-12 Education

As educational jurisdictions around the world begin to integrate computational thinking (CT) into their K-12 mandatory curriculum, there is a need to ensure that classroom activities are engaging, relate to student interests, and effectively promote the development of CT skills. The analysis of sports performance data fulfills this criteria for some students and teachers and presents an exciting context in which students from all K-12 grades can access complex CT concepts. This lightning talk investigates sports analytic tasks within the context of the CT in mathematics and science taxonomy introduced by Weintrop et al. (2015). Specific classroom activities are presented including analyzing the distribution of soccer goals, baseball salaries, the location of successful basketball shots, and the placement of volleyball serves. Examples of data analytics projects will be shared and the four main components of the taxonomy (data practices, modelling and simulation practices, computational problem-solving practices and systems thinking practices) will be identified within each project.