research-article

Programming in the wild: trends in youth computational participation in the online scratch community

Authors:

Deborah A. Fields,

Yasmin KafaiAuthors Info & Claims

WiPSCE '14: Proceedings of the 9th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

Pages 2 - 11

https://doi.org/10.1145/2670757.2670768

Published: 05 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Most research in primary and secondary computing education has focused on understanding learners within formal classroom communities, leaving aside the growing number of promising informal online programming communities where young learners contribute, comment, and collaborate on programs. In this paper, we examined trends in computational participation in Scratch, an online community with over 1 million registered youth designers primarily 11-18 years of age. Drawing on a random sample of 5,000 youth programmers and their activities over three months in early 2012, we examined the quantity of programming concepts used in projects in relation to level of participation, gender, and account age of Scratch programmers. Latent class analyses revealed four unique groups of programmers. While there was no significant link between level of online participation, ranging from low to high, and level of programming sophistication, the exception was a small group of highly engaged users who were most likely to use more complex programming concepts. Groups who only used few of the more sophisticated programming concepts, such as Booleans, variables and operators, were identified as Scratch users new to the site and girls. In the discussion we address the challenges of analyzing young learners' programming in informal online communities and opportunities for designing more equitable computational participation.

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Index Terms

Programming in the wild: trends in youth computational participation in the online scratch community
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education

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cover image ACM Other conferences

WiPSCE '14: Proceedings of the 9th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

November 2014

150 pages

ISBN:9781450332507

DOI:10.1145/2670757

Conference Chairs:
Carsten Schulte
Freie Universität Berlin
,
Michael E. Caspersen
Aarhus University
,
Judith Gal-Ezer
The Open University Israel

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Published: 05 November 2014

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WiPSCE '14: Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

November 5 - 7, 2014

Berlin, Germany

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https://doi.org/10.31592/aeusbed.1464694
Lewis MHolloman AHernández Cuevas BCrawford C(2024)Exploring Computational Thinking Perspectives in Black Communities with Physiological Computing2024 Black Issues in Computing Education (BICE)10.1109/BICE60192.2024.00013(27-32)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/BICE60192.2024.00013
Niousha RSaito DWashizaki HFukazawa Y(2023)Investigating the Effect of Binary Gender Preferences on Computational Thinking SkillsEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1305043313:5(433)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13050433
Ma JZhang YZhu ZZhao SWang Q(2023)Game-Based Learning for Students’ Computational Thinking: A Meta-AnalysisJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633123117894861:7(1430-1463)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331231178948
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