Reflections on a scratch summer course: trainers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

The GEN10S Portugal project offered 15-hour face-to-face Scratch programming courses to groups of students and two or more teachers from each class, from schools that were project members. Two Scratch teachers per class, hired by the project, participated in 12 of these 15 hours, supporting the activities. When the schools’ face-to-face activities stopped, in January 2021, a 12-hour Scratch course was tested. This course was then replicated 11 times, between July and August 2021, involving 132 students. In this article, we will use a qualitative methodology to analyse the perspectives of the teachers involved in the course in which they were trainers. The results obtained point to the fact that the trainers consider that the courses went well, and the objectives were achieved.

KEYWORDS:

• Scratch
• online teaching
• online course
• remote teaching

1. Introduction

The GEN10S Portugal project began in 2017 and resulted from a collaboration between Google.org, the Spanish association Ayuda en Acción, the Private Social Solidarity Institution SIC Esperança and the ICT Competence Centre from the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal (CCTIC-ESE/IPS). The aim of the project was to teach programming to children, promoting equal opportunities in the digital area, reducing socioeconomic and gender barriers (Gen10s PT, 2022). The Scratch language, in which programming is more accessible to a greater diversity of population, including lower age groups (Resnick, 2008), was the language used in the training courses.

In each class, two experienced Scratch teachers and at least one teacher from the class, monitored the groups of students in the training sessions which took place during school time. The first 6 hours of training were dedicated to initial learning, using worksheets with guided activities for building Scratch projects. The following 6 hours of these courses were dedicated to the construction of original projects, with the students being monitored by the teachers of the class involved in the project, concluding with another 3 hours with the Scratch teachers, dedicated to the conclusion of the projects of the different groups and presenting them to the class. The organization of the teaching training sessions resulted from an articulation between the Scratch teachers’ availability and the timetables of the class teachers, and it was natural that some courses took place in a short period of time and others were more extended, throughout the school period. It should be noted that the class teachers had, prior to the sessions with the students, a Scratch training course. The Scratch teachers, on the other hand, also had a training course, this one much more focused on the methodology to be implemented with the students.

The first GEN10S Portugal edition, which aimed to reach 5000 students, was followed by the second edition, which began in the 2019/2020 school year, covering a total of around 11,000 5th and 6th grade students. The schools’ temporary closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the training sessions from taking place, so it was not possible to achieve the initial goal, which predicted to reach around 4000 students. This fact led to the extension of the project, which was then established for conclusion in February 2022. In January 2021, there was a new suspension of school activities for a period of 15 days, which became the perfect opportunity for CCTICESE/IPS to promote a fully online Scratch course, for students in the 5th and 6th grades, attending Portuguese public schools. The course had 6 days of training, with 2 h each day, and was designed to run in three different stages.

In the first stage, the trainers presented some features of the Scratch programming language at the beginning of the session, followed by the students’ group distribution, with a maximum of four elements that were placed in virtual rooms, where they had to explore and program one of the GEN10S project worksheets, addressing movement, animation or sound commands, for example, as well as control and decision structures, arithmetic and logical operations and the use of variables. During this stage, the Scratch teacher entered each group virtual room and, for some time, accompanied the students in what they were doing, clarifying any doubts that they had. If one of the groups had any doubts, they could call a Scratch teacher to help them. The session ended with all the students in the same room, with all the Scratch teachers, to reflect on the projects carried out. This methodology was used over two days.

In a second stage, the students had to work on an “original” idea to present as a proposal for the development of a Scratch collective project. In different virtual rooms, the groups developed the projects, being also monitored by the Scratch teachers. These sessions took place over three days and, in our opinion, students have developed group work and programming skills.

The third and last stage was the last day, when the groups presented the projects, they had developed, to the big group, with all students and teachers in the same virtual room. Each presentation was followed by some comments, made by students and Scratch teachers.

Once the announcement was made on CCTIC Facebook page, the registrations for the 25 available places were filled in a short period of time (Centro de Competência TIC – ESE/IPS, 2022). The course ran from 28 January 2021 to 2 February 2021. Since the course didn´t take place in schools, during school time, it was decided to have four Scratch trainers simultaneously to monitor the students. All the groups presented their final original project to the re-maining participants. This training experience allowed us to understand that students were able to learn Scratch and collaborate in an online environment that was used. Therefore, according to what we have learned from this course, we believe that we can adapt the methodology used in the GEN10S Portugal project to online courses.

We considered that quite a few students in this age group already had in their possession a laptop computer, headphones with microphone, a backpack, a hotspot and a SIM (subscriber identity module) card, in accordance with the decision of the Portuguese government, made public in November 2020 (Escolas receberam instruções sobre entrega de computadores a alunos, 2022). So, we assumed that students, applying for these courses, had already spent some time in distance learning and already had the minimum essential skills to work and collaborate with other students and teachers in an online environment.

Following this course, a proposal was made to SIC Esperança to include this course in a distance learning modality in the GEN10S Portugal project, in order to run a Scratch summer course. Having the proposal been approved, the most experienced Scratch teachers were invited to an online meeting, followed by an explanation and training on the methodology to be adopted. In this online version, the class teachers would not be present, so the Scratch teachers would have to guarantee the 12-hour training course. The maximum number of students for each course was set at 16, so that only one trainer could monitor the different groups, preferably with four elements. The receptivity from the Scratch teachers was very good and an implementation schedule was created. The course, called “Let’s Scratch together!”, was promoted through CCTIC-ESE/IPS and SIC Esperança channels. We also sent some emails to several teachers who previously had some connection with CCTIC, to increase the enrolment possibility.

Despite this dissemination, for the total of 176 vacancies, there were not a high number of applications to attend, with 157 students (90%) having their enrolment confirmed by their parents or guardians, which may be related to the fact that the students were already on holiday. So, we organized 11 classes with students from different regions of the country and seven Scratch teachers were involved.

In this article we will try to understand if, according to their perceptions, it was possible to successfully use digital media to work with 5th and 6th grade students, distributed all over the country. We will present a theoretical contextualization followed by the description of the methodology to be adopted for the analysis to better understand the perceptions of Scratch teachers.

2. Theoretical framework

The integration of digital technologies (TD) in teachers’ practices and in the work developed by students is an issue that has been gathering more and more consensus in our society. It is unavoidable, since the preparation of young people for the digital world is an imperative in the current context. At school, students do not seek a transmission of knowledge by the teacher, where they have a less active role, but rather a space where they can build their own knowledge, where they have the possibility to interact, cooperate, research, select, assess, work in groups and produce (Lopes, 2018).

These ideas, that are advocated by the students, should lead to a change in the teacher’s role, who should be able to perform his work according to a constructivist perspective of learning, which leads to the development of skills by the students. So, students must become a fundamental part of the whole process and they must have the opportunity to carry out a more personalized learning process, with a greater production and autonomy capacity, regarding what and how they learn (Costa et al., 2017).

This is a complex work, that constantly challenges teachers, as it breaks, in some way, with some preconceived ideas and leads them to use digital technologies in multiple dimensions of their profession. According to (Lucas & Bem-Haja, 2021), this challenge is characterised by the ability “to integrate digital technologies critically, reflectively and with pedagogical intent to enhance students’ learning, and to teach them to use and harness them for their future lives” (p. 2).

One of the situations that accelerated all this work was the pandemic we had, associated with Covid-19. In a short period of time, both teachers and students had to adapt themselves to this new reality, having moved from face-to-face teaching to distance learning. Many of the teachers then focused on the e-learning modality because they did not have the possibility of face-to-face contact with the students. In addition to this factor, there were others related to the technical possibilities it offers to the teaching and learning process: i) easy access to information, regardless of time and space; ii) easy publishing, distribution and updating of content; iii) diversity of tools and services for communication and collaboration between all the involved parts in the teaching and learning process (Gomes, 2005).

If we also think about the pedagogical relationship that should occur in the teaching and learning process, taking into account the characteristics of this teaching modality, we agree with the ideas of (Gomes, 2005) when he states that it can allow students and teachers: i) to create empathy, since the internet use is associated with a support technology; ii) to share experiences; iii) to explore the large amount and diversity of resources that are available on the internet; iv) to get involved in the learning community that is being developed through the virtual space, with students having a fundamental role in the construction of their own knowledge.

Looking back, in retrospective, and despite of all the efforts made by teachers and students, much of the work done at this point became associated with another term, Emergency Remote Teaching. Faced with something completely unexpected and for which no one was prepared, for (Hodges et al., 2020), this was the only possible response, as the work carried out arose from something that had not been planned or designed from the start. Thus, the goal was not the development of an educational ecosystem, but rather to provide a quick, configurable and reliable response to a need we had, in a given space of time.

However, and although we had a teaching period with particular characteristics and differentiated from the work that was being done, it was, according to the same author, a time when we had the possibility to “think outside standard boxes to generate various possible solutions that help meet the new needs for our learners and communities” (p. 10).

This is how we see this challenge that was set to us and we think, like (Osman, 2020), that this emergency remote education led to a change in the educational scenario, reinvent-ing, somehow, the idea of education. In fact, when we analyse what has been happening in schools, after this period and with the work carried out under the Digital Transition Plan, we can see that there is currently an intense period of digital training. Thus, we believe that technologies may come to play an “increasingly important role in supporting the development of students’ learning, supporting innovation, particularly in new ways of designing and organizing learning (…)” (Pais & Candeias, 2020).

So, when organising the fully online Scratch courses, we took into consideration that they would have to be different, firstly because the ones we had done so far had been developed face-to-face, but also because, due to the work carried out in emergency remote teaching, we would have to involve students in a more flexible, differentiated way, considering synchronous and asynchronous moments, trying to respond to any inequalities and exclusion factors that might occur. In addition, we would have to create activities that promote meaningful learning for all students (Jonassen, 2000) attending the designed courses.

To this end, we carried out a timely planning, taking into account, in our opinion, some quality criteria, based on those defined by (Moreira et al., 2020): i) promotion of active involvement by the students; ii) construction of knowledge by the students, from the interaction with other people; iii) development of autonomous learning; iv) promotion of project development as an answer to some problems; v) communication, discussion and collaboration; vi) application or transfer of built knowledge to new scenarios and contexts and vii) reflection on the development and results of the projects carried out.

Thus, we also tried, through the methodology used in the courses and which we will address later, to be in line with the advocated by (Ally, 2004), when he states that for online learning to occur, one should “create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities (…)” (p. 3).

Besides this concern with the students, the way they would learn, and the activities developed, there was also another concern with the course trainers. Although they had an extensive experience in this area, their role would also be different since we would be dealing with e-trainers or distance trainers.

Similarly to (Polainas, 2018), we believe that the role of the trainer is extremely important in terms of the whole training coordination and organisation, but also in terms of the encouragement, motivation of trainees and promotion of a favourable time for collaboration. It is therefore fundamental that social relationships are established and this is “a determining factor for the success of eLearning training” (p. 18).

In addition to these characteristics, they should also have technological knowledge, which allows them to encourage and monitor the work done by the trainees, leading to good feedback practices, also fostering formative evaluation, to “promote the involvement of participants so that the knowledge they build is usable in new and different situations” (Polainas, 2018).

In conclusion, e-trainers, to perform their functions in the best way, should “possess a set of personal characteristics, and pedagogical, technological and communicational skills and competences” (Rodrigues, 2004, p. 77), so that trainees have an enriching learning experience.

3. Methodology

The study carried out has a qualitative nature (Amado, 2017) since it seeks to investigate facts, ideas, and discover meanings in individual actions and social interactions, from the perspective of the actors involved in the process (Coutinho, 2013).

Among the different qualitative methods, the study is considered to follow the principles of a case study. In fact, case study is a research method widely used in Social Sciences when the “how?” and the “why?” (Yin, 2018) are sought, when the researcher has little control of the actual events, and when the field of investigation focuses on a natural phenomenon within a real-life context.

Unlike experimental studies, where there are factors that can be changed to understand what effects they produce, in case study the descriptive and interpretive elements are more important than the cause-and-effect relationships. The use of case study method has as its main goal to understand an observed phenomenon with welldefined characteristics, designated as a case and does not require the intention of generalizing the results obtained (Coutinho, 2013).

So, data was collected through a focus group with the participation of some of the course under study trainers. A focus group was chosen “to create a candid, normal conversation that addresses, in depth, the selected topic” (Bardin, 2004, p. 4). This informal conversation should be developed by a small group of participants who know the reality under study (Vaughn et al., 1996). In this case, all the seven trainers who delivered the summer courses were invited, but for availability reasons, only four were present. Each one of these trainers was responsible for one of the training classes. To collect their perceptions and ideas, a set of questions was developed to guide the conversation. The questions were formulated with the purpose of not forgetting any topic related to the functioning of the courses but giving full freedom for the speakers to express their ideas and refer to other topics not foreseen (Miles et al., 2020). The questions were: 1) Presentation of the participants, identifying how many courses they took part in and with how many students in each course; 2) In general terms, how did each course go?; 3) Were there any particular students who stood out for positive or negative attitudes? To what factors do you attribute this distinction?; 4) How do you evaluate the products produced in the course, when comparing them with the face-to-face version?; 5) Do you think that there were some constraints due to the fact that the students were online, in different regions of the country?; 6) Were the materials made available for the training appropriate?; 7) Was the platform where the training took place suitable for the course goals?; 8) Did the students feel any technical difficulties during the course?; 9) Did you feel that the parents helped the students during the course? In what way? 10) The length of the course was appropriate? 11) What would you change about the course? 12) How do you evaluate the students’ motivation during the course? Were there any moments or proposals with less or more success in this respect? 13) How do you evaluate the students’ autonomy in task solving? And how do you relate it with motivation?

The participants’ interventions in the focus group were recorded and transcribed for later categorization.

The analysis of the collected data was performed based on a set of categories [24] built in two stages. In the first stage, the categories of analysis, built on the basis of the focus group guiding questions, were assigned to the collected data and, in a second stage of analysis, the initial categories were readjusted or even merged (Miles et al., 2020).

The trainers present were identified from F1 to F4 according to their first intervention in the focus group.

4. Data analysis

We organised the data analysis according to the established categories: Students’ motivation; Digital skills; Parents’ intervention; Final projects; Communication tools with students/parents; Relationship between students in the class; Some constraints.

4.1. Students’ motivation

The trainers were unanimous in considering that, in general, the students who attended the courses were highly motivated. They highlighted the fact that the course took place in a short period of time “they were interested and the fact that the course took place in a concentrated period of time also helped.” (F1), or that it were the students and their parents who signed up for the course, unlike the classes in which the face-to- face project was developed, where it was the teachers and the school who made the decision to offer it to the whole class:

“In some face-to-face classes, they are there by obligation and there is a set of students always going to do it, because they have to do it. This wasn’t the case here. The group was interested in that course and as F1 said, by being concentrated and the daily contact also favoured a little bit the relationship with us” (F2).

One of the trainers considered that the online context brought benefits by allowing a calm environment in the sessions: “I think that, sometimes, when clarifying doubts, you must have a calmer environment, even to clarify doubts” (F3). (F3) and another highlighted the students’ background diversity and previous experience as a positive factor:

“But, in my opinion, it went very well, it went very well for several reasons. Firstly, because we brought together students from the North to the South of the country. Students from the interior and the coast, students who did not know each other, students who had to communicate, because they were forced to communicate in the working groups where they were, students with more experience and students with less experience, students who worked better and those who worked worse, I think it was very positive” (F4).

4.2. Digital skills

The course enrolment took place online, which may be an indicator of the students and their families’ digital skills. This aspect is referred by the trainers as a relevant difference when comparing to the face-to-face contexts in which the courses have taken place.

“For example, this year I lost count of the number of students I had to teach to put accents, for example [referring to face-to-face training]. In online, I haven’t had that need. It never happened.” (F2).

“The autonomy at the level of digital skills was also very significant, anything they had to do, they solved, they tried to solve, they helped” (F3).

4.3. Parents’ intervention

In trainers’ opinion, the presence of parents was not even felt, or they helped only when it was necessary, but never interfering or intervening directly in the course work:

“In some cases, I didn’t even realize if parents were there or not. In other cases which I realised they would be, the parents helped at the beginning, or helped, when necessary, never interfered, never entered the session, so the parents knew clearly what they had to do (F1).

One of the trainers draws a parallel with distance learning in the pandemic period where, in his opinion, there was more parental interference:

“They were present at the preparation, but not directly intervening. Then, afterwards, they were alone, without any interference and I didn´t know if they were passing in the room or if they were even in the room. Unlike distance education, when sometimes they helped their children” (F2).

The same idea is taken up by another one of the trainers, attributing this to the pressure of having a good grade which, in these courses did not exist:

“In distance education, I noticed a lot of parental interference in students’ projects, but I think it was the pressure of having good grades and here the students didn´t have that pressure” (F3).

4.4. Final projects

The final projects were considered of high quality in these classes by all the trainers. However, they consider that more than the methodologies adopted or the fact that it was online, the key factor was students’ motivation because they wanted to enrol the course and the students who attended it, were mainly good students, as highlighted by trainer F3

“the projects were mostly good, but because we got, maybe, a good class. If we got another type of students, maybe the projects would be different”. (F3) or even F2 “Sometimes in the classroom we have average classes, other times we have classes with good students, or who have already had Scratch before and that makes a huge difference” (F2).

They also noted that there were no problems with forgetting passwords, unlike face-to-face courses. This aspect, as they emphasised, could be due to the fact that, unlike face-to-face classes, in which they used school computers, in this case they were always using the same computer which could have the passwords recorded.

“And being always on the same computer, at home, they could even have saved the password and at school it might not happen. At school, we don’t even advise keeping it because it could go wrong” (F1).

4.5. Communication tools with students/parents

The course enrolment was made by the parents, with their personal email address, on the CCTIC-ESE/IPS platform. This platform was used by some trainers to send the worksheets, which caused some problems because the students did not have access to the account created by their parents. On the other hand, the training sessions took place on the Zoom platform, which the students accessed with their own email. This use of two platforms created some confusion that was overtaken without major difficulties.

4.6. Relationship between students in the class

Although the students did not know each other previously, a good relationship was established in the groups which, in some cases, even generated autonomous work sessions and new friendships:

“They arranged meetings on WhatsApp and etc. and they were together several times without… on their own initiative” (F2) or even “They were two girls who met in class and exchanged knowledge and from that moment, they talked almost every day by phone, that is, they became friends from different regions of the country” (F4).

The trainers were unanimous in considering that the working environment was good, and there were some enriching situations generated by the fact that the students were from different parts of the national territory.

“It has to do with the accents, with the pronunciations, I think this is an enriching factor for them to have contact. Being in different parts of the country, they hear the same thing said in different ways. So, I think that was a positive aspect” (F1).

4.7. Some constraints

As constraints, the trainers highlighted the occasional cases of students who did not fit in so well with this type of teaching. In almost every class there was a student in this situation.

“There was one student who disturbed, from time to time, the group in which he was working, with a provocative attitude, that was always managed, and apart from those occasional episodes, I think it worked out very well” (F1).

“There were those who liked to rule and wouldn’t let others do the work, so I had to put a little brake there, get them to share the screen and, for example, ask the others to do it and the one who knew things better, was watching and gave the instructions” (F3).

“And it was very complicated to integrate that girl into a working group because she… I got the feeling that she was a little bit individualist” (F4).

Another one of the weaknesses pointed out was related to communications and the fact that two platforms were used to support the training.

“There were some difficulties related to the kids’ emails and communication. Some of them had email, but it was from their parents and to send them some materials, sometimes there were some details that didn’t always work so well.” (F2) “So, the issue that I think that has space for improvement has to do a little bit with communication. And with access. Maybe it’s not the platform itself, maybe it has to do with the passwords, with the email because there were some constraints, at that level” (F1).

One of the trainers also talked about the fact that sometimes we have, in face-toface classes, situations where all the students in the class participate, with no enrolment or selection, and it would be very difficult to support if they enrolled for the online courses:

“There are some students we can’t monitor because it is very difficult to keep them working face-to-face. Those cases that appear, those more complicated cases, 2 or 3 that we have to insist, that don’t want to work, that don’t concentrate, in online courses it would be very difficult to have them working with others” (F1).

5. Conclusions

Through trainers’ statements, we have the perception that the courses went well and that the goals were fulfilled. Parents did not interfere in students’ learning, excluding some cases where they were facilitators in the communication processes. Students were motivated and had good digital skills which became facilitators in the learning process. The fact concerned with the voluntary participation facilitated the existence of very interested groups and working environments that allowed the construction of very good final works. The geographical students’ dispersion and the fact that they were at home may have contributed to the dedication they had to the work developed. The absence of parallel conversations or small disagreements, common in the classroom, may also have been important for the motivation of the students. However, it seems that this distance work would be difficult with some of the students who still have many difficulties in the digital use or even in their behaviour.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).