A new Open Educational Resource (OER) has been released to help bring software variability — an emerging and research-supported dimension of computational thinking — into the classroom.
The resource encourages students to move beyond creating isolated programs and instead learn how to reason about families of related solutions through configurable systems.
Designed mainly for teachers and students in secondary education and vocational training, the OER connects computational thinking with everyday situations such as customizing a smartphone or choosing options in a video game.
Through interactive activities, modeling exercises, and programming tasks, learners explore how shared structures can generate multiple variations.
The resource is organized into five modules, including an introduction to variability concepts, modeling with diagrams and the Universal Variability Language (UVL), metaprogramming using Snap!, a configurable maze game project, and a gamified assessment activity.
Developed from research conducted by the DiversoLab group at the University of Seville in collaboration with Rey Juan Carlos University, the project builds on award-winning research presented at the International Software Product Line Conference 2025, where classroom pilot experiences showed promising educational results.
Read more and access the resource here: https://cedec.intef.es/un-rea-para-trabajar-una-nueva-dimension-del-pensamiento-computacional-la-variabilidad/