Incorporación de pensamiento computacional en ingenierías como soporte a la competencia de desarrollo de problemas: Jugando con lightbot

One of the challenges in engineering education is equipping our students with the skills to identify, formulate, and solve problems through a process of seeking the best answer. Computational thinking that is being incorporated into curricula worldwide, helps to improve analytical skills, involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, based on the fundamentals of computing. Many of the ways that have been used to incorporate computational thinking are tied to programming courses in the first semesters, which can be challenging for students. Our work presents the experience of using the Lightbot game as a tool to incorporate the development of computational thinking as a support to the problem-solving competence in engineering. To validate our proposal, quantitative analysis with a quasi-experimental design was carried out with a convenience sample of 80 students. Three dimensions related to problem-solving have been evaluated: algorithmic thinking, decomposition, and generalization). The result obtained shows a significant difference in the three p-value results of the experimental group. Having made use of Lightbot has allowed us to observe that it can be incorporated in short sessions and courses aimed at solving problems and that they are not necessarily linked to programming, which would allow its incorporation in different subjects of the various Engineering programs.