research-article

Scratch vs. Karel: impact on learning outcomes and motivation

Authors:

Andreas Mühling,

Peter HubwieserAuthors Info & Claims

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

Pages 50 - 59

https://doi.org/10.1145/2670757.2670772

Published: 05 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experiment regarding the effects of using one of two different programming environments in secondary schools. Both "Scratch" and "Karel the Robot" have been successfully used in these settings previously. These two environments are also representative for two classes of programming environments for beginners.

One is more graphically oriented and may therefore alleviate the steep learning curve of programming while the other is text-based and therefore more akin to "real" programming. Also, one places more emphasis on the visualization of program structure and the other emphasizes visualizing program flow.

The experiment has been conducted in parallel in two school classes, each using one of the two approaches. The abilities of the students were tested before and after the experiment as well as their intrinsic motivation and the perceived self-regulation. The results show, that the class using Scratch has higher intrinsic motivation and performs better, however the Karel class shows a higher identified regulation.

References

[1]

B. W. Becker. Teaching CS1 with Karel the robot in Java. SIGCSE Bull, 33(1):50--54, 2001.

Digital Library

[2]

J. Bergin, K. Bruce, and M. Kölling. Objects-early tools: A demonstration. SIGCSE Bull, 37(1):390--391, 2005.

Digital Library

[3]

P. Brusilovsky, E. Calabrese, J. Hvorecky, A. Kouchnirenko, and P. Miller. Mini-languages: A way to learn programming principles. Education and Information Technologies, 2(1):65--83, 1998.

Digital Library

[4]

D. Buck and D. J. Stucki. JKarelRobot: A case study in supporting levels of cognitive development in the computer science curriculum. SIGCSE Bull, 33(1):16--20, 2001.

Digital Library

[5]

Q. Burke and Y. B. Kafai. The writers' workshop for youth programmers: Digital storytelling with Scratch in middle school classrooms. In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '12, pages 433--438, New York and NY and USA, 2012. ACM.

Digital Library

[6]

E. L. Deci and R. M. Ryan. An overview of self-determination theory: An organismic dialectical perspective. In E. L. Deci and R. M. Ryan, editors, Handbook of self-determination research, pages 3--33. University of Rochester Press, Rochester and NY, 2002.

[7]

G. Fesakis and K. Serafeim. Influence of the familiarization with\Scratch" on future teachers' opinions and attitudes about programming and ICT in education. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual ACM SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE '09, pages 258--262, New York and NY and USA, 2009. ACM.

Digital Library

[8]

D. Franklin, P. Conrad, B. Boe, K. Nilsen, C. Hill, M. Len, G. Dreschler, G. Aldana, P. Almeida-Tanaka, B. Kiefer, C. Laird, F. Lopez, C. Pham, J. Suarez, and R. Waite. Assessment of computer science learning in a Scratch-based outreach program. In Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '13, pages 371--376, New York and NY and USA, 2013. ACM.

Digital Library

[9]

J. Goode, G. Chapman, and J. Margolis. Beyond curriculum: The exploring computer science program. ACM Inroads, 3(2):47--53, 2012.

Digital Library

[10]

S. Grover, S. Cooper, and R. Pea. Assessing computational learning in K-12. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Innovation & Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE '14, pages 57--62, New York and NY and USA, 2014. ACM.

Digital Library

[11]

P. Hubwieser. Computer science education in secondary schools -- the introduction of a new compulsory subject. Trans. Comput. Educ., 12(4):16:1--16:41, 2012.

Digital Library

[12]

P. Hubwieser and A. M. Mühling. What students (should) know about object oriented programming. In K. Sanders, M. E. Caspersen, and A. Clear, editors, Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Computing Education Research, Rhode Island, USA, 8--9 August 2011, pages 77--84, New York, 2011. ACM.

Digital Library

[13]

C. Kelleher and R. Pausch. Lowering the barriers to programming: A taxonomy of programming environments and languages for novice programmers. ACM Comput. Surv., 37(2):83--137, 2005.

Digital Library

[14]

U. Kiesmueller and T. Brinda. How do 7th graders solve algorithmic problems? A tool-based analysis. SIGCSE Bull, 40(3):353, 2008.

Digital Library

[15]

K. Larason. Using Karel the robot as a classroom motivator. 3C ON-LINE, 2(4):6--, 1995.

Digital Library

[16]

C. M. Lewis. How programming environment shapes perception, learning and goals: Logo vs. Scratch. In Proceedings of the 41st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '10, pages 346--350, New York and NY and USA, 2010. ACM.

Digital Library

[17]

D. J. Malan and H. H. Leitner. Scratch for budding computer scientists. SIGCSE Bull, 39(1):223--227, 2007.

Digital Library

[18]

J. Maloney, L. Burd, Y. Kafai, N. Rusk, B. Silverman, and M. Resnick. Scratch: A sneak preview. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating Through Computing, C5 '04, pages 104--109, Washington and DC and USA, 2004. IEEE Computer Society.

Digital Library

[19]

J. Maloney, M. Resnick, N. Rusk, B. Silverman, and E. Eastmond. The Scratch programming language and environment. Trans. Comput. Educ., 10(4):16:1--16:15, 2010.

Digital Library

[20]

J. H. Maloney, K. Peppler, Y. Kafai, M. Resnick, and N. Rusk. Programming by choice: Urban youth learning programming with Scratch. In Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '08, pages 367--371, New York and NY and USA, 2008. ACM.

Digital Library

[21]

O. Meerbaum-Salant, M. Armoni, and M. Ben-Ari. Learning computer science concepts with Scratch. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Computing Education Research, ICER '10, pages 69--76, New York and NY and USA, 2010. ACM.

Digital Library

[22]

O. Meerbaum-Salant, M. Armoni, and M. Ben-Ari. Habits of programming in Scratch. In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Joint Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE '11, pages 168--172, New York and NY and USA, 2011. ACM.

Digital Library

[23]

A. Mühling, P. Hubwieser, and T. Brinda. Exploring teachers' attitudes towards object oriented modelling and programming in secondary schools. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Computing Education Research, ICER '10, pages 59--68, New York and NY and USA, 2010. ACM.

Digital Library

[24]

F. H. Müller, B. Hanfstingl, and I. Andreitz. Skalen zur motivationalen Regulation beim Lernen von Schülerinnen und Schülern: Adaptierte und ergänzte Version des academic self-regulation questionnaire (SRQ-A). Wissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem Institut für Unterrichts- und Schulentwicklung (IUS), (Nr. 1):17 S., 2007.

[25]

J. D. Novak and A. J. Cañas. The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them: Technical report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 2008-01, 2008.

[26]

R. E. Pattis. Karel the Robot: A Gentle Introduction to the Art of Programming. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York and NY and USA, 1 edition, 1981.

Digital Library

[27]

M. Resnick, J. Maloney, A. Monroy-Hernández, N. Rusk, E. Eastmond, K. Brennan, A. Millner, E. Rosenbaum, J. Silver, B. Silverman, and Y. Kafai. Scratch: Programming for all. Commun. ACM, 52(11):60--67, 2009.

Digital Library

[28]

M. Rizvi, T. Humphries, D. Major, M. Jones, and H. Lauzun. A CS0 course using Scratch. J. Comput. Sci. Coll., 26(3):19--27, 2011.

Digital Library

[29]

R. Romeike. Applying creativity in CS high school education: Criteria, teaching example and evaluation. In Proceedings of the Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research -- Volume 88, Koli Calling '07, pages 87--96, Darlinghurst and Australia and Australia, 2007. Australian Computer Society, Inc.

Digital Library

[30]

R. M. Ryan and J. P. Connell. Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(5):749--761, 1989.

[31]

C. Scaffidi, A. Dahotre, and Y. Zhang. How well do online forums facilitate discussion and collaboration among novice animation programmers? In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '12, pages 191--196, New York and NY and USA, 2012. ACM.

Digital Library

[32]

E. Schofield, M. Erlinger, and Z. Dodds. MyCS: CS for middle-years students and their teachers. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE '14, pages 337--342, New York and NY and USA, 2014. ACM.

Digital Library

[33]

L. Seiter and B. Foreman. Modeling the learning progressions of computational thinking of primary grade students. In Proceedings of the Ninth Annual International ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research, ICER '13, pages 59--66, New York and NY and USA, 2013. ACM.

Digital Library

[34]

M. Wilde, K. Bätz, A. Kovaleva, and D. Urhahne. Überprüfung einer Kurzskala intrinsischer Motivation (KIM). Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Naturwissenschaften, 15:31--45; 230 KB, 2009.

[35]

A. Yadin. Reducing the dropout rate in an introductory programming course. ACM Inroads, 2(4):71--76, 2011.

Digital Library

Cited By

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
Selcuk NKucuk SSisman B(2024)Does really educational robotics improve secondary school students’ course motivation, achievement and attitude?Education and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-024-12773-129:17(23753-23780)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-024-12773-1
Göbel EAndres DKorwisi KLatoschik MHennecke M(2024)Algorithmen erleben in Virtual RealityDigitale Medien in Lehr-Lern-Konzepten der Lehrpersonenbildung in interdisziplinärer Perspektive10.1007/978-3-658-45088-5_11(173-185)Online publication date: 24-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-45088-5_11
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Scratch vs. Karel: impact on learning outcomes and motivation
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Model curricula

Recommendations

The Scratch Programming Language and Environment

Scratch is a visual programming environment that allows users (primarily ages 8 to 16) to learn computer programming while working on personally meaningful projects such as animated stories and games. A key design goal of Scratch is to support self-...
Use of problem-solving approach to teach scratch programming for adult novice programmers (abstract only)
SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Novice programmers usually fail to combine abstract concepts and knowledge into program design, even though they know the syntax and semantics of individual statement. Adult novice programmers with little computer background knowledge might face more ...
Introducing Scratch as the Fundamental to Study App Inventor Programming
LATICE '15: Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

In this paper, the experience and lessons learned from introducing Scratch as the fundamental to learn App Inventor programming for novice programmers is presented. In the first semester, eight graduate students were taught by basic programming concepts ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

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.

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]

Sponsors

FU-BERLIN: Free University Berlin

In-Cooperation

SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 November 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

WiPSCE '14

Sponsor:

FU-BERLIN

WiPSCE '14: Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

November 5 - 7, 2014

Berlin, Germany

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 104 of 279 submissions, 37%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

34
Total Citations
View Citations
666
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)56
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4

Reflects downloads up to 07 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

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
Selcuk NKucuk SSisman B(2024)Does really educational robotics improve secondary school students’ course motivation, achievement and attitude?Education and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-024-12773-129:17(23753-23780)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-024-12773-1
Göbel EAndres DKorwisi KLatoschik MHennecke M(2024)Algorithmen erleben in Virtual RealityDigitale Medien in Lehr-Lern-Konzepten der Lehrpersonenbildung in interdisziplinärer Perspektive10.1007/978-3-658-45088-5_11(173-185)Online publication date: 24-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-45088-5_11
Dúo-Terrón P(2023)Analysis of Scratch Software in Scientific Production for 20 Years: Programming in Education to Develop Computational Thinking and STEAM DisciplinesEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1304040413:4(404)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040404
Goswami LSenges AEstier TCherubini M(2023)Supporting Co-Regulation and Motivation in Learning Programming in Online ClassroomsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100897:CSCW2(1-29)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610089
Fagerlund JLeino KKiuru NNiilo-Rämä M(2022)Finnish teachers’ and students’ programming motivation and their role in teaching and learning computational thinkingFrontiers in Education10.3389/feduc.2022.9487837Online publication date: 21-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.948783
Loksa DMargulieux LBecker BCraig MDenny PPettit RPrather J(2022)Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Programming Education: Theories and Exemplars of UseACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/348705022:4(1-31)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3487050
Saygıner ŞTüzün H(2022)The effects of block‐based visual and text‐based programming training on students' achievement, logical thinking skills, and motivationJournal of Computer Assisted Learning10.1111/jcal.1277139:2(644-658)Online publication date: 14-Dec-2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12771
Perera PTennakoon GAhangama SPanditharathna RChathuranga B(2021)A Systematic Mapping of Introductory Programming Languages for Novice LearnersIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2021.30895609(88121-88136)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3089560
TALAN T(2020)Investigation of the Studies on the Use of Scratch Software in EducationJournal of Education and Future10.30786/jef.556701(95-111)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.30786/jef.556701
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten