A paper co-authored by Sergi and Carlos has been accepted as a full paper for the upcoming JENUI 2018 conference . JENUI is the national forum that brings together professors and researchers to share their experiences, reflections and projects on teaching computer science and informatics topics at the university level. Whereas teaching experiences at university level are the primary focus of the conference, other types of works like experiences and projects aimed to promoting and fostering informatics studies among pre-university students were also welcome. Our paper precisely fitted into the latter group.

Its title is “SUCRE4Kids: The promotion of computational thinking through social and tangible interaction” and presents the experience of using the SUCRE4Kids kit (http://www.sucre.uji.es/) for the promotion of scientific vocations, computational thinking and programming among high school students. SUCRE4Kids combines the use of intelligent devices and electronic components with a visual block-based programming tool for the realization of tangible projects. In the paper, we explain how this experience was carried out, in terms of protocol and organization of the sessions, and summarise quantitative results, in terms of time distribution and student participation. We also put special emphasis on the qualitative assessment, as a result of uncovered observations of students during the sessions. Our results suggest that the introduction of interventions regarding tangible and social interactions made a real difference in order to engage students, boost their motivation, and keep their attention and interest during the sessions, which all together might positively influence the choice of computer science studies in the future.

The abstract of the paper appears below.

This paper presents the first experiences of the SUCRE4Kids project for fostering scientific vocation, the promotion of computational thinking and coding skills in high school students. SUCRE4Kids combines smart devices and electronic components with visual block programming for real projects. Far from being an individual activity, as in almost all educational initiatives related to code learning, the novelty resides in the introduction of social aspects and tangible interaction in the sessions with students. Our observations with more than 200 students reveal that transforming the way to learn programming into a social and tangible activity, it can capture the curiosity and attention of students, and it seems a way to follow in order to attract students to computer science or studies related to STEM competencies.