Print Friendly Version

Objectives and Purposes
This research aims to investigate if upper-grade elementary school students are capable of learning computer programming and if they would enjoy learning it. In particular, we try to understand how well the students receive each of the three different kinds of programming tools, ranging from one that does not require any code to be typed in, to the second one that requires programmers to type in English-like commands, and to the third one with which programs need to be coded using rigid syntax.

Significance
Computer courses offered by elementary schools in Taiwan focus exclusively on teaching common software applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, and PhotoImpact. Considering that most children use computers at very young ages today, it is questionable why schools need to spend so much valuable class time teaching all and nothing but application tools. This pilot study reveals that computer programming is not as inaccessible to children as many educators think it is. The results of our experiments indicate that children can learn and they enjoy learning computer programming. The school teachers who assisted us with the experiments also were quite impressed by what they saw. What we found from this research should help to answer an often-raised question of “Why teaching computer programming in elementary schools” with a counter-question—“Why not?”

Perspective or Theoretical Framework
We conducted a pre-experimental research to gather both qualitative and quantitative data about students’ attitudes toward learning different programming tools, the difficulties they encountered in writing programs and getting programs to work, and how their perception of programming changed as they learned more about it. The programming packages selected for use in our experiments were Stagecast Creator, HANDS, and Visual Basic. Each of them represents a different technique of teaching the computer what to do, including programming by demonstration, event-driven programming and visual programming.

Research Methods
Experiments were carried out at three elementary schools during the summer of 2004. A total of 81 ten- to twelve-year-old students participated voluntarily in these experiments. Each experiment lasted two weeks, three hours a day and five days a week. First we introduced students to Stagecast Creator for nine hours, then HANDS for six hours, and Visual Basic for the remaining fifteen hours. With each programming tool students learned how to create simple games and animations. Research data were gathered through classroom observation, questionnaire surveys of both students and their parents, and students’ performance in the in-class programming exercises and homework assignments. Responses to each question in the questionnaires were totaled, and averaged if necessary, to reveal general facts. Qualitative data from observations were compiled and the more significant phenomena were identified from them.

Results or Expectations
In the following we summarize part of the more important findings:
(1) All three programming packages were well liked by students, with Stagecast Creator and Visual Basic both rated 4.18 out of the highest score of 5, and 3.52 for HANDS. When asked to choose their favorite package among the three, 47% of students went for Visual Basic, in contrast to 45% for Stagecast Creator and 7% for HANDS. Interestingly, students also considered Visual Basic to be the most difficult to learn, whereas Stagecast Creator was found to be the easiest.
(2) A majority of parents found their children to be excited about going to the programming classes everyday and the children also showed interest in doing programming assignments at home. Moreover, 73% of students told their parents that they wished to have the chance of learning more about programming in the future.
(3) Classroom observations revealed that most students were able to finish each programming exercise in designated amount of time without help or with only slight help. The homework assignments they turned in showed creativity as well as good commands of the programming tools.

Implications for Practice
We hope to share the lab material we designed and the experience we gained from this research study with conference participants. Hopefully, those who have had similar experience in teaching computer programming at the elementary school level will also be willing to share their ideas with us.