research-article

Habits of programming in scratch

Authors:

Orni Meerbaum-Salant,

Michal Armoni,

Mordechai Ben-AriAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '11: Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

Pages 168 - 172

https://doi.org/10.1145/1999747.1999796

Published: 27 June 2011 Publication History

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Abstract

Visual programming environments are widely used to introduce young people to computer science and programming; in particular, they encourage learning by exploration. During our research on teaching and learning computer science concepts with Scratch, we discovered that Scratch engenders certain habits of programming: (a) a totally bottom-up development process that starts with the individual Scratch blocks, and (b) a tendency to extremely fine-grained programming. Both these behaviors are at odds with accepted practice in computer science that encourages one: (a) to start by designing an algorithm to solve a problem, and (b) to use programming constructs to cleanly structure programs. Our results raise the question of whether exploratory learning with a visual programming environment might actually be detrimental to more advanced study.

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Cited By

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Moran RZabala G(2024)Physical Bits: Un entorno de programación para robótica educativaRevista Abierta de Informática Aplicada10.59471/raia2023857:2(21-34)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.59471/raia202385
Yu QYu KLi B(2024)Effects of Block-Based Visual Programming on K-12 Students’ Learning OutcomesJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/07356331241293163Online publication date: 29-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331241293163
Braune GMühling A(2024)Observing Students' Behavior During Problem Solving: Determinants of SuccessProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678109(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677619.3678109
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Index Terms

Habits of programming in scratch
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ITiCSE '11: Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

June 2011

418 pages

ISBN:9781450306973

DOI:10.1145/1999747

General Chair:
Guido Rößling
TU Darmstadt, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
Tom Naps
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, USA
,
Christian Spannagel
PH Heidelberg, Germany

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2011

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ITiCSE '11

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SIGCSE

ITiCSE '11: Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 27 - 29, 2011

Darmstadt, Germany

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Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

View all

Moran RZabala G(2024)Physical Bits: Un entorno de programación para robótica educativaRevista Abierta de Informática Aplicada10.59471/raia2023857:2(21-34)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.59471/raia202385
Yu QYu KLi B(2024)Effects of Block-Based Visual Programming on K-12 Students’ Learning OutcomesJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/07356331241293163Online publication date: 29-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331241293163
Braune GMühling A(2024)Observing Students' Behavior During Problem Solving: Determinants of SuccessProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678109(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677619.3678109
Atashpendar ARothkugel SMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Block-Based Programming for Mobile with Conventional Exceptions and Automatic EvaluationProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653549(597-603)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653549
Chen LXiao SChen YSong YWu RSun L(2024)ChatScratch: An AI-Augmented System Toward Autonomous Visual Programming Learning for Children Aged 6-12Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642229(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642229
Nurue HGray JLo DGamess E(2024)A Testing Extension for ScratchProceedings of the 2024 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/3603287.3651217(266-271)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3603287.3651217
Fuchs WMcDonald AGautam AKazerouni A(2024)Recommendations for Improving End-User Programming Education: A Case Study with Undergraduate Chemistry StudentsJournal of Chemical Education10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00219101:8(3085-3096)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00219
Osogami MOhkuma KPirotto C(2024)The impact of teaching a graphical programming language before character-based programming on Japanese university students’ programming understandingSN Social Sciences10.1007/s43545-023-00824-24:1Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
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Kalemkuş JKalemkuş F(2024)The Effects of Designing Scientific Experiments with Visual Programming Language on Learning OutcomesScience & Education10.1007/s11191-024-00546-8Online publication date: 17-Jul-2024
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Branthôme M(2023)Pyrates: Design and Evaluation of a Serious Game Aimed at Introducing Python Programming and Easing the Transition from BlocksACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363906124:1(1-24)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2023
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