Abstract

In recent years, the computational thinking has been estab-lished as a formative priority from primary school onwards, both interna-tionally and nationally level, which has led to initiatives of recreationalstrategies and curricular integration. The initial training processes inprogramming are mainly focused on workshops about teaching method-ologies, therefore, the assessment instruments are artifacts that measurethe quality of the solution elaborated by the teacher, relegating the evalu-ation of the process due to the difficulty to obtain elements that allow thecharacterization. Thus, this article characterizes through analytics andstatistical tests the process of solving computer problems by primaryschool students based on the effort involved in each challenge. Hence,experimental tests were conducted with a group of K-12 students, whosolved a series of drills using a block-based tool, both gamified and non-gamified with the purpose of corroborating that gamification generateshigher levels of global effort. In the end, the results show that a groupof students exhibits a higher level of engagement and effectiveness in thegamified version while in the non-gamified version they are more reflec-tive. Not only do these results provide crucial information for the creationof assessment instruments of the computer solving problems process, butalso provide to the behavioral differences in gamified environments.