Scratch Programming Research Articles

Study on Teaching Strategies of Scratch Programming in Elementary Schools based on Deep Learning Theory

Scratch programming software uses block building instead of code input, which effectively reduces the difficulty of programming. This paper discusses how to use deep learning theory to improve the teaching effect of Scratch programming, and proposes some effective Scratch programming teaching strategies based on deep learning, which can provide reference for front-line Scratch programming teachers.

The Effect of Difference of Interaction Types in Google Classroom on Developing Scratch Programming Skills among Sixth Grade Students and their Attitudes Towards the Programming Subject

This study aimed at identifying the effect of difference of interaction types in Google Classroom on developing scratch programming skills among sixth-grade students and their attitudes towards the programming subject. The study adopted the quasi-experimental methodology design based on two experimental groups. The sample of the study consisted of 66 students; they were divided into two equivalent groups. The first group was taught by a synchronous mode in Google classroom, the second group followed the asynchronous mode in Google classroom. Some tools were prepared such as an achievement test, attitudes scale towards programming, and an evaluation card for the final product of scratch programming skills. The validity and reliability of these tools were verified. The results of the study showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups, in the post-test application of the achievement test and the attitude scale, the differences were in favor of the first group (synchronous mode). There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in the post test of the evaluation card. The research proposed some recommendations, most important of which is preparing a guide for students and teachers that includes the services provided by Google Classroom and how to employ it effectively in teaching. Keywords: interactive modes, Google classroom, scratch program, programming.

Novel Scratch Programming Blocks for Web Scraping

Although Scratch is the most widely used block-based educational programming language, it is not easy for students to create various types of Scratch programs based on real-life data because it does not provide web scraping capabilities. In this paper, we present novel Scratch blocks for web scraping. Using these blocks, students can not only scrape the contents of HTML elements in a web page by using CSS selectors but also automate their keyboard and mouse in a number of ways, such as by using XPaths, the coordinates of the mouse, input strings, keys, or hot keys. We also present file access blocks that allow students to easily store and retrieve the scraped data in the form of key–value pairs. We conducted two lectures for a total of 15 primary/secondary school (K-12) teachers, allowing them to make ten web scraping example applications. As a result of a survey of the teachers, the proposed web scraping blocks achieved high scores for all evaluation measures.

The integrated lesson in literature and informatics “Pocket-sized man” (VI class)

The article describes the conduct of the integrated lesson in literature and informatics. This lesson is dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of N. A. Nekrasov, which was celebrated on December 10, 2021. At the lesson, students get acquainted with the work of the great Russian poet and writer N. A. Nekrasov “Peasant children”, learn about how children lived in the past. In the Scratch programming environment, students create an animation (cartoon) based on an excerpt from the poem “Peasant children” “Pocket-sized man”. The lesson is aimed at forming students’ ideas about the life and work of N. A. Nekrasov, developing interest in project activities and programming, encouraging students to use the Scratch programming environment to create multimedia projects. The lesson provides conditions for mastering the basic universal educational activities of an informational nature, such as posing and formulating a problem; search and selection of necessary information, application of information retrieval methods; structuring and visualization of information; selection of the most effective ways of solving problems depending on specific conditions; independent creation of activity algorithms in solving problems of a creative and exploratory nature.

Secondary school teacher’s conception and reflection of computer programming with Scratch

AbstractThe present study explores teachers' conception and reflection of computer programming with a Scratch in terms of technological and pedagogical aspects. A mixed research approach specifically sequential explanatory research design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The population was comprised of two hundred and four in-service Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology teachers from Kayonza district, Rwanda. However, only 34 were randomly selected to participate in the study. An achievement test and structured interview were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. The quantitative data obtained from pre- and post-tests were analyzed using a pairedttest, and the data from the interview was analyzed by descriptive, and interpretive analyses. It was revealed that secondary school teachers have a respectable conception and constructive reflection of Scratch programming once attending scratch training. Quantitative findings showed that there was an important difference in the mean among pre- and post-tests with 0.171 learning gain and an effect size of 0.53 (df = 33,p < 0.05). It was also revealed that Scratch is an operational instructional tool for teaching and learning Mathematics and Sciences. Furthermore, teachers articulated progressive views of using scratch in teaching and learning Mathematics and Sciences as it supports them to visualize abstract content, improves students' interest and impetus, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, and acts as an assessment tool.

Impact of a Scratch Programming Intervention on Student Engagement in a Nigerian Polytechnic First-Year Class: Verdict From the Observers

Impact of a Scratch Programming Intervention on Student Engagement in a Nigerian Polytechnic First-Year Class: Verdict From the Observers

Impact of a Scratch programming intervention on student engagement in a Nigerian polytechnic first-year class: verdict from the observers

An engaging first programming class (CS1) often inspires students’ passion for computer science (CS). However, the evidence in the literature suggests that the average CS1 classes are anything but engaging for many students. The performance of CS compared to other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in international student engagement surveys seems to substantiate CS1 failure, attrition rates, and lack of diversity in most CS classes. Meanwhile, for its simplicity in introducing programming to beginners, primary and secondary schools use Scratch, an educational programming environment developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. For the same reason, higher institutions now include some forms of Scratch instruction in CS1. The question remains, to what extent is Scratch engaging, especially for students in higher education? This study addressed this gap by observing college computer science students exposed to a constructionist Scratch programming pedagogy. We adopted a descriptive design based on quantitative observations. To observe the class during a weekly 2-hour session, we employed five CS educators, one observer per week. Each observer, employing a 20-item observation protocol, rated the extent of affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement of first-year CS students in a polytechnic in North Central Nigeria. Most of the students were learning to program for the first time. Analysis of the data showed a significant agreement in the ratings of the five observers for overall student engagement, although the impact was moderate. However, while agreement in their ratings for affective engagement was significant, with a large effect, there was no significant concordance in their ratings for behavioral engagement. Observers also significantly agreed in their ratings for cognitive engagement; however, the impact was moderate. These findings suggest that employing Scratch in higher education can be engaging and useful, especially for students with no prior programming experience.

Scratch and visual block programming in mathematics: perceptions of preservice teachers in Columbia

This research evaluates the use of visual block programming-based instruction and its possibilities in mathematics, from the perspective of future teachers. A visual programming environment was employed to introduce pre-service teachers to prepare mathematics activities and programming. The study followed a pre-experimental design with a sample of 65 pre-service teachers. A Wilcoxon test was used to evaluate the gains in the participants’ knowledge of computational concepts and attitudes towards Scratch as a pedagogic tool in mathematics. We analyzed open questions to evaluate the participants’ attitudes concerning programming applications, and their perception of advantages in the implementation of programming in mathematics. Although there is no significant improvement in learning, positive results were obtained for programming in the classroom, with significant improvements in motivation, active learning, fun, and the possibility of learning Cartesian coordinates and other mathematical concepts.

Mathematics and Science Teacher’s Conception and Reflection on Computer Programming with Scratch: Technological and Pedagogical Standpoint

The current study investigates teachers' conception and reflection of computer programming from scratch in terms of technological and pedagogical standpoint. Mixed research approaches typically achievement tests and interviews were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data respectively. A total of twenty-one Mathematics and Science teachers were randomly selected to participate in the study. A paired t-test was used to analyze quantitative data from pre and post-test, while descriptive and interpretive analyses were used to analyze qualitative data from the interview. The results of the study showed that Mathematic and Sciences teachers have a great conception of scratch programming after attending scratch programming. There was a significant difference in mean between pre and post-test (p ˂ 0.05). It was also found that scratch is an effective pedagogical tool for teaching and learning Mathematics and Sciences. In addition, teachers expressed positive views of using scratch in teaching and learning Mathematics and Sciences as it helps them to visualize abstract content, motivate students, increase students' interest, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, act as an assessment tool and increase student's academic performance.

Understanding Prospective Teachers’ Task Design Considerations through the Lens of the Theory of Didactical Situations

Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attention of educational researchers. The present research investigates task design of prospective teachers in the Scratch programming environment. A total of twenty-three female prospective teachers participated in a professional development program. They were in their third academic year majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school. The prospective teachers attempted to design mathematics-based programming problems. The present research utilizes the theory of didactical situations in mathematics, specifically the situation types, the paradoxes of the didactical contract and the situation components, to study the task design of the prospective teachers. It does that by focusing on one group of prospective teachers. The research results indicated that the prospective teachers were concerned mainly with the situation of information, situation of reference and situation of action. Doing so, they were concerned with the paradox of the said and the unsaid, the paradox of uncertainty, and the paradox of devolution. In addition, they took care of both algorithmic and creative reasoning. They also took care of students’ devolution, where this devolution was conditioned with following an institutionalization. They were also concerned with giving students autonomy and encouraging decision making regarding the solution of the problem. Furthermore, they planned to enable students’ control over their learning.

Effect of different mind mapping approaches on primary school students’ computational thinking skills during visual programming learning

Computational thinking (CT) skills help students both understand and utilize computing in various domains to cope with the challenges posed by the complex digital world. This study applied mind mapping to programming language instruction in a primary school, and explored the effects of mind mapping on students' CT skills when learning programming with Scratch as a programming tool. Two types of mind mapping, construct-by-self mind mapping (CBS-MM) and construct-on-scaffold mind mapping (COS-MM), were proposed to compare which type is more effective in terms of students' CT skills. Seventy-three public primary school fifth-grade students aged 10 to 11 participated in the study. The CBS group included 33 students learning with the CBS-MM instructional approach, while the COS group comprised 40 students learning with the COS-MM instructional approach. Data were obtained from nine topic Scratch programming assignments and pre- and post-CT skills surveys completed by the two groups. Paired sample t tests were used to analyze whether the two types of mind mapping approach could improve both groups' CT skills. One-way ANCOVA and one-way ANOVA were used to examine the difference in the two groups' CT skills. The results showed that both CBS-MM and COS-MM can improve students' CT skills; however, the COS group students could better improve their CT skills with the assistance of the COS-MM method compared with the CBS group students who learned with the CBS-MM method. The findings of this study can provide some enlightenment for relevant instructors to design instruction and implement programming teaching with different kinds of mind mapping support that facilitates students’ CT.

Adopting Computer Science Pedagogical Patterns in Developing and Enhancing Computational Thinking Among Zero-Year Engineering Students

Prospective undergraduate engineering students are assumed to possess Computational Thinking (CT) skills through basic programming. They are thus required to have considerable programming experience to enable them to execute tasks involving CT skills. Unfortunately, this is not the case as existing studies demonstrate lack of these skills, leading to poor academic performance. This was the case with first-year computer science international students at Eötvös Loránd University, faculty of Informatics, prompting the management to seek the causes of poor academic performance among the students and proper interventions. Two intervention courses were created to help develop and enhance CT among the students – Introduction to Computational Thinking and Scratch Programming.  Apart from inculcating CT among learners, another underlying concern is that teachers are not keen to embrace CT approaches in the classroom. This is attributed to lack of time in utilising machine technology and lack of pedagogical skills. This was the case when the Scratch programming course was first offered. Like teaching any other subject, CT teachers require a collection of pedagogical experiences to enable effective CT teaching, including pedagogical patterns. Therefore, this paper demonstrates the adoption of computer science (CS) pedagogical patterns in the designing and teaching Scratch Programming course to zero-year students in the faculty to develop and enhance CT. The patterns established through the literature review were deployed in the development and delivery of the course. The survey was conducted to establish the effectiveness of the tool.

Construcción de modelos de Ingeniería Genética a través de la programación con Scratch

This article presents a research focused on modeling and programming for the learning to Genetics Engineering (GI) in the high school. We designed, implemented and analyzed a didactic sequence around the construction of recombinant insulin in which the students had to build models by programming in Scratch. The models constructed were characterized from three theorical categories linked to biological models: continuity, interaction and transformation and integration. Were obtained three types of models, in each type of model the categories analized were found in different levels of development. The students were able to conceptualize the GI and the modelling allowed them express the factors and processes necessary for the construction of rDNA molecule (recombinant DNA) using GI.

Programming Education Using Scratch to Learn a Text-Based Programming Language

In this study, we conducted programming training sessions using Scratch in introductory programming classes for first-year students at information technology college and for new employees, and aimed to provide a text-based programming language skill based on their understanding of programming in Scratch. As a result, we found that students who were able to create contents using more than 1,000 blocks in Scratch showed higher proficiency in the text-based programming language. And, in the training for new employees, it was found that the teaching method using Scratch was particularly effective for new employees without computer-science background who had no programming experience.

Forms of communications in scratch and the SOLO taxonomy

This paper attempts to categorize parameters of communication between codes observed in the Scratch programming environment, using the SOLO taxonomy. These parameters are the form of communication (within an object, between different objects and to serve external devices scenarios), the mechanism used for communication (Polling and Interrupt techniques) and the ratio between the number of transmitters and receivers, which will be considered in a future work. Implementing this categorization in a two-dimensional table of representative codes for each case is formed. In this table, one dimension corresponds to the forms of communication and the other dimension to the mechanisms used. The ranking of the codes in each of the dimensions is done by means of the levels of the SOLO taxonomy. The table can be used to develop criteria for assessing the qualitative characteristics of the codes produced by students within a broader assessment system.

Digital Games Designed By Prospective Teachers in The Scratch Program Through The Eyes of Mathematics Teachers

The Scratch programming tool is an effective tool for the logical problem-solving skills of middle school students with its ease, richness of their visual characters and all their objects, as well as processing skills. In particular, the fact that research has shown that teaching with Scratch has a positive effect on students' mathematical achievements in algebraic expressions indicates that a different teaching method can be used in the field of algebra learning. Therefore, it is believed that the use of mathematics teachers in the lesson by learning this program before service will contribute to the students ' learning and love of mathematics. The aim of the research is to examine the opinions of mathematics teachers about the games that prospective teachers design in the Scratch program. The participants of this study, in which the case study was conducted, are six mathematics teachers. The research process was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, 13 games were designed by prospective teachers about achievements in algebraic expressions. In the second phase, six mathematics teachers were asked to score these games according to the revised rubric of Li et al (2013). In the third stage, teachers' opinions on the reasons for the scores they gave to the games were taken. Kappa coefficients were calculated for the scoring compliance among teachers. Qualitative data analysis techniques were used in the analysis of teacher opinions. In this study, it was revealed that most teachers found the games interesting, cle, and instructive/reinforcing. Some teachers found the games original, while others stated that they were classic games that they often encountered. In addition, some teachers emphasized that they can use these games in their lessons, while others stated that they cannot use them in their lessons for reasons such as missing instructions, code errors, and lack of program.

Pre-service pre-school teachers' opinions about using block-based coding/scratch

"Abstract: In this study, it was aimed to examine the pre-service pre-school teachers’ opinions about using block-based coding/Scratch in education. 28 pre-service pre-school teachers were participated studying at a public university in a Marmara province region. Within the scope of the study, pre-service teachers were trained on the block-based coding Scratch program for four weeks. A semi-structured interview form consisting of 12 questions was used to determine the opinions of the participants. The data of the study were analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. As a result of the study, 85.71% of pre-school teacher candidates stated that block-based coding education should start at an early age like a language education, this education is important as a necessity of the technology age and all students should benefit from this education in order to provide an effective education, 14.25% of teacher candidates specified that this education is untimely for younger age levels and should not be given to everyone. In addition, the pre-service teachers stated that the block-based coding/Scratch program training helped them gain new ideas in terms of creating materials, improved their creativity and contributed to design abstract material in addition to concrete ones. Additionally, 46.42% of pre-service teachers stated that block-based coding education should start between the ages of 5-7. In this context, it is recommended to provide coding education both in pre-school and undergraduate education."

Software Scratch: Contribuições dos Jogos para o desenvolvimento da Aprendizagem de Crianças com Deficiência Intelectual / Scratch Software: Contributions of Games to the Learning Development of Children with Intellectual Disabilities

The objective of this work is to report an experience with game development through the Scratch program as a didactic strategy to enhance the learning of children with intellectual disabilities (DI) who attend the Specialized Educational Assistance room. During the experiment, we sought to develop attention, concentration, perception, fine and broad motor coordination through personalized games to the students' specific needs. The experience has brought positive results, which lead to infer that the use of games contributes to the development of learning of children with ID. Qualitative analysis has also shown that games can have a positive emotional impact on students by favoring fun, engaging and dynamic activities.

Design and Development of Matter Module with the Integration of Computational Thinking by Employing ADDIE Model

This study aims to explore the design and development process of the Matter module for secondary school students. The needs analysis shows a similar perception between students and teachers who described the matter topic as complex due to the abstract nature of the Matter topic. This module emphasises the use of animation in visualising particles in different matter states. The module was designed to make learning more active and meaningful by integrating computational thinking skills through cooperative and project-based learning. Through this approach, students are actively involved in building animation projects to visualise the movement of particles by applying computational thinking concepts (abstraction, decomposition, generalisation, algorithm, and evaluation) as they engage with programming in Scratch. Thus, to systematically design and develop the Matter module, the ADDIE model was employed. The design and development of the module comprise five phases, Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. The module was evaluated by experts using a formative evaluation approach. The results show that the validity of the Matter module is high and can support the integration of computational thinking skills.

Automatic Creativity Measurement in Scratch Programs Across Modalities

Promoting creativity is considered an important goal of education, but creativity is notoriously hard to measure.In this paper, we make the journey fromdefining a formal measure of creativity that is efficientlycomputable to applying the measure in a practical domain. The measure is general and relies on coretheoretical concepts in creativity theory, namely fluency, flexibility, and originality, integratingwith prior cognitive science literature. We adapted the general measure for projects in the popular visual programming language Scratch.We designed a machine learning model for predicting the creativity of Scratch projects, trained and evaluated on human expert creativity assessments in an extensive user study. Our results show that opinions about creativity in Scratch varied widely across experts. The automatic creativity assessment aligned with the assessment of the human experts more than the experts agreed with each other. This is a first step in providing computational models for measuring creativity that can be applied to educational technologies, and to scale up the benefit of creativity education in schools.