Computational Thinking, a Discipline to Enhance Digital Skills Such as Programming

This document presents the results of the development of a learning program on computational thinking through programming challenges with robots oriented to early childhood. The methodological approach used was quantitative, using a quasi-experimental design, taking pretest/posttest measures, with experimental and control groups. The sample of participating students was 46. They belonged to a group of first grade of primary education, aged between 6 and 7 years, in a Spanish educational center. The learning of computational thinking was measured through the following dimensions: algorithmic thinking-sequences, abstraction-patterns and debugging. The learning activities used were an adaptation of the activities proposed in the “TangibleK” robotics curriculum. The results generated show positive effects in relation to the level of achievement reached by the students in the proposed challenges; in other words, there is a significant effect on the mastery of skills related to computational thinking. Differences were found between the pretest and posttest measures of the experimental group. Those of the latter group were statistically significant and higher than those of the control group. Therefore, we can statistically attribute the mastery of computational thinking skills to the participation in the training activities.