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.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education |
| Pages | 168-172 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2011 |
| Event | Proceedings of the 16th annual conference reports on innovation and technology in computer science education - working group reports - Darmstadt, Germany, Darmstadt, Germany Duration: 27 Jun 2011 → 29 Jun 2011 Conference number: 16th |
Publication series
| Name | ITiCSE'11 - Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science |
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Conference
| Conference | Proceedings of the 16th annual conference reports on innovation and technology in computer science education - working group reports |
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| Abbreviated title | ITiCSE '11 |
| Country/Territory | Germany |
| City | Darmstadt |
| Period | 27/06/11 → 29/06/11 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Management of Technology and Innovation