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According to active learning, students should be responsible for their own learning. Automatic free-text scoring allows teachers to provide open-ended questions with their correct answers to a computer system, so when students answer the questions, they get immediate feedback (a score, a comment, or both). However, teachers are usually overloaded with many tasks, and they may not have time to create the questions with the correct answers. Therefore, in the 2012/2013 academic year, we asked a group of 124 Pre-Primary and Primary Education students to become the creators of the questions and their correct answers in groups in a free-text scoring system, so the questions use learners’ language, not teachers’ language. From them, 41 students (group of involved students, GIS) fulfilled all the requirements during the course. Our hypothesis was that GIS would be able to increase their academic performance and levels of engagement compared to the rest of the students. The results gathered provide statistic evidence to support that hypothesis. This study pretends to help teachers who want to increase the academic performance and levels of engagement of their students in courses that they may find boring and unrelated to the main topic of their degree, or not directly related with their main academic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational thinking (CT) is a key skill in the 21st century. However, it is not clear which is the most effective way to acquire and improve CT. Big research efforts are made to determine which pedagogical means should be used. One research trend is based on the idea that teaching programming since Primary Education suffices to improve CT. In our previous work, we proposed and validated a methodology based on metaphors and used of Scratch (MECOPROG) to teach basic programming concepts to children. It is our hypothesis H that by applying MECOPROG, students will develop their CT. To check H, we carried out an experiment with 132 Primary Education Students (9–12 years in age). At the beginning of the experiment, all students were asked to fill in a programming concepts test and two tests to measure their CT. During the sessions, all students were taught according to MECOPROG. Finally, they took the three tests again. A significant increase in the results on all the tests has been measured, supporting the use of metaphors and Scratch to teach computer programming concepts to Primary Education students to develop their CT. • Computational Thinking can be improved using metaphors and Scratch. • Primary Education students' Computational Thinking can be improved. • Primary Education students can learn basic programming concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]