Advancing preuniversity students' computational thinking skills through an educational project based on tangible elements and virtual block-based programming

University students enroling in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-related studies such as computer science continue to decline, even though worldwide educational policy reports warn about the need for this type of professionals in the immediate future. Promoting computer science studies among preuniversity students seems the most direct solution to reverse this issue. In this context, we present theSucre4Kidsproject whose main objectives are to engage young people into computational thinking and programming concepts using tangible elements and social interaction. We apply theSucre4Kidsapproach to introductory courses of computational thinking and programming concepts to high-school students. The main results of the 3-year intervention in the classroom with 256 high-school students reached suggest that tangible elements and social interaction in groups are determining factors in increasing students' motivation to learn to code and to raise their interest in STEM disciplines.