What Emotions do Pre-university Students Feel when Engaged in Computational Thinking Activities?

Abstract

Emotions affect how we acquire knowledge, being one of the causes of the demotivation generated at the time of studying a new field. Computer Science does not always pique the interest of young people, so we carry out an analysis of emotions that are present in primary and secondary school students, around 8-9 years old and 12-13 years old, who engage in Computational Thinking activities, considering the educational level, gender, and type of intervention, to understand why this lack of interest. The sessions were based on 1 hour of face-to-face class in which activities related to Computational Thinking were carried out. The instrument used to measure emotions was the Developmental Channels Questionnaire which includes 13 different emotions that students must answer using the Likert scale from 0 to 10. The emotions felt have been mostly positive and ambiguous, while negative emotions have a low intensity, particularly in primary education. Regarding the educational level, there are differences between girls and boys only in the secondary education, while in the primary they are no significant. Also, girls show an evolution when carrying out this type of activity, while boys do not change.