A Generator of Game Programming Challenges for Computational Thinking Development

Problem-solving skills can make students more autonomous in their learning in addition to contributing to the individual's success in real-life situations (professionally or personally). In this sense, Computational Thinking, as a problem-solving approach that can involve information technologies, can contribute a lot to this subject. Therefore, due to its essence, the development of Computer Science concepts is closely related to the employment of problem-solving activities. However, teachers may face difficulties when proposing Computational Thinking problem-solving activities to their students. This paper proposes the engineering of a software that aims to allow teachers to generate challenges related to game and interactive animations programming to support their classes. The problems generated by the system, do not limit the learners' creative power. Besides that, teachers can balance the reasoning component of the challenges according to the learners' level of knowledge in programming and algorithms. An experiment with Computational Thinking workshops was analyzed in order to design the proposed software.