Investigating the effect of the use of code.org on younger elementary school students’ attitudes towards programming

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of the use of code.org (particularly Course 2) on elementary school students’ attitudes towards programming, and whether the positive effects of this software are lower for students who are 7 or 8 years old. The research involved 293 students (age range: 7–10). After the use of Course 2 of code.org, the older students (9- and 10-year-olds) expressed a significantly more positive attitude towards programming than the younger ones (7- and 8-year-olds). The total number of the tasks that the students solved successfully in Course 2 shows that the older students were significantly more successful than the younger students, which could have influenced the difference in their attitudes. Based upon the results, it can be concluded that the use of Course 2 of code.org by younger students, who are unable to solve a significant number of the programming tasks, can negatively affect their attitude towards programming. Therefore, Course 2 of code.org should not be used on younger students. Some parts of Course 2 could be used by younger students in accordance with K5 standards, but these tasks should be clearly identified on the code.org website or carefully selected by teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitude towards programming
• code.org
• elementary education
• problem-solving

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to anonymous referees for useful comments leading to improvements in their exposition.

Disclosure statement

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