Authors: Leovy Echeverría, Ruth Cobos, Mario Morales, Fernando Moreno y Víctor Negrete (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)

1. Promoting Computational Thinking
skills in primary school students to
improve learning of geometry
Ruth Cobos
Computer Science and Engineering Department
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Madrid, Spain
ruth.cobos@uam.es
Victor Negrete
Facultad de Ingeniería Informática
Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Montería, Colombia
victor.negreteb@upb.edu.co
Leovy Echeverría
Facultad de Ingeniería Informática
Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Montería, Colombia
leovy.echeverria@upb.edu.co
Mario Morales
Departamento de Matemáticas y Estadística
Universidad de Córdoba
Montería, Colombia
mamorales@correo.unicordoba.edu.co
Fernando Moreno
Facultad de Ingeniería Informática
Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Montería, Colombia
fernando.morenoo@upb.edu.co

2. AGENDA
I. INTRODUCTION
 What’s Computational Thinking?
 This paper’s scope
II. STATE OF THE ART
 Concepts related to Computational Thinking
 Computational Thinking initiatives
III. APPROACH
 General Description
 The Environment
IV. EXPERIMENTATION
 An exploratory data analysis
 Case study
 Results and discussions
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

3. I. INTRODUCTION
What’s Computational Thinking?
Learning strategy based on the use of Computer
Science concepts to solve a problem in any domain.
Kindergarten Primary school Secondary school Higher education
CT

4. I. INTRODUCTION
This paper’s scope
Learning of geometry for both primary and secondary
school students cognitive aspects of
visualization
Integrating technological aspects into the teaching of
geometry to promote computational thinking (CT)
Implementation of CT initiatives to improve STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Education

5. II. STATE OF THE ART
Concepts related to CT
Structure models
 Michaelson
 Barr & Stephenson
 Weintrop
K-12 curriculum standard
CT Language (CTL)
Data
Algorithm
design
Automation
Problem
solving

6. II. STATE OF THE ART
CT Initiatives
STEM skills development
Infuse any subject
Visual
Tangible
Gamified
Automation
Design
Communication
FRAMEWORK
…

7. III. APPROACH
General Description
 Face-to-face activities + geometry learning
activities supported by Moodle-G
 Two CT skills based on Mathematics and
Science taxonomy (4 categories and 22 CT
skills):
 To analyse and to visualize data
 Practice exercises about geometric solids

8. III. APPROACH
The environment: Moodle-G

9. IV. EXPERIMENTATION
Students’ opinion on the potential use of
the proposed toolLearning tools known and used by the students
5 schools
185 primary students of them
 Age: 9-10 years old
AS CL C FJC PS TOTAL
WEB and
others
20 22 20 13 27 102
57 52 55 36 75 55 %
NONE
2 13 7 16 4 42
5 30 19 44 11 22 %
An exploratory data analysis

10. IV. EXPERIMENTATION
Case study
Comfacor school
32 students from fourth grade
Topic: construction of
geometric solids.
 Prisms
 Pyramids
 Round bodies
Two types of exercises:
 Watching and selecting
 Elaboration and analyzing of
geometric solids
Exercise CT Skill involved
Finalized
taxonomy
practice
Select a
prism
Selection and
watching
Visualization
Analysis
Draw a
pyramid
Data generation Analysis
Exercises conducted

11. IV. EXPERIMENTATION
 Results and discussions
Students’ motivation
“The results obtained with the t-test corroborated that the students in the
experimental group obtained better performance (Mean=3.9) than the students from
control group (Mean=3.5).”
Group G N Mean Min Max
Control
F 17.0 3.5 2.0 4.0
M 17.0 3.4 2.0 4.0
Experimental
F 17.0 3.8 3.0 5.0
M 15.0 3.9 2.0 5.0
USAGE LEARNING SOCIAL TOTAL
MOTIVATION
- 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
5 1 2 8
16 3 6 8 %
+
13 11 5 29
40 34 16 31 %
14 20 25 59
44 63 78 61 %
Students’ scores
G: gender N: sample size

12. V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
STEM Education initiative
Two specific CT skills: the visualization and the analysis of
geometric solids
Moodle-G platform
Positive results in the students’ motivation were found.
Specifically, the most of the students felt very motivated with the
social interaction supported by the Moodle-G platform
The assertive results derived from the case study corroborate
that the implementation of the proposed approach enhances the
students’ performance
We propose to enhance both the approach and the environment

13. REFERENCES
 M. Dogan and R. Icel, “The Role of Dynamic Geometry Software in the Process of Learning: GeoGebra Example about
Triangles,” Int. J. Hum. Sci., vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1441–1458, 2011.
 K. K. Bhagat and C. Y. Chang, “Incorporating GeoGebra into geometry learning-A lesson from India,” Eurasia J. Math. Sci.
Technol. Educ., vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 77–86, 2015.
 R. A. Saha, A. F. M. Ayub, and R. A. Tarmizi, “The effects of GeoGebra on mathematics achievement: Enlightening
Coordinate Geometry learning,” in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010, vol. 8, pp. 686–693.
 N. Sinclair and C. D. Bruce, “New opportunities in geometry education at the primary school,” ZDM, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 319–
329, 2015.
 R. Marrades and Á. Gutiérrez, “Proofs produced by secondary school students learning geometry in a dynamic computer
environment,” Educ. Stud. Math., vol. 44, no. 1–3, pp. 87–125, 2000.
 M. T. Battista, “Spatial visualization and gender differences in high school geometry,” J. Res. Math. Educ., vol. 21, no. 1, pp.
47–60, 1990.
 Á. Gutiérrez, “Visualization in 3-Dimensional Geometry: In Search of a Framework,” Proc. 20th PME Conf., vol. 1, pp. 3–19,
1996.
 H. Kaufmann, D. Schmalstieg, and M. Wagner, “Construct3D: A Virtual Reality Application for Mathematics and Geometry
Education,” Educ. Inf. Technol., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 263–276, 2000.
 J. A. Qualls and L. B. Sherrell, “Why Computational Thinking Should Be Integrated Into the Curriculum,” J. Comput. Sci.
Coll., vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 66–71, 2010.
 L. Wolf, A. Yadav, J. Good, M. Margaritis, and M. Berges, “Computer Science (CS) and Computational Thinking (CT)
International Perspectives on Developing Student and Teacher Competencies,” in SITE–Society for Information Technology
and Teacher Education, 2015, pp. 7633–7636.
 V. Barr and C. Stephenson, “Bringing Computational Thinking to K-12: What is Involved and What is the Role of the
Computer Science Education Community ?,” ACM Inroads, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 48–54, 2011.
 G. Keren and M. Fridin, “Kindergarten Social Assistive Robot (KindSAR) for children’s geometric thinking and metacognitive
development in preschool education: A pilot study,” Comput. Human Behav., vol. 35, pp. 400–412, 2014.

14. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was partly funded by UPB
Montería project number 018-03/16-SI007 and
e-Madrid project, number P2018/TCS-4307.
Besides, the participation of the Comfacor
School in the city of Montería is acknowledged
and appreciated

15. THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION