Modality matters: understanding the design of introductory programming environments
David Weintrop · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2016
In the last 12 months, Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco have all announced major initiatives to bring computer science classes and computational thinking into every high school in their cities. Chicago, with its CS4All program, takes this one step further, planning to make computer science a graduation requirement for all high school students by 2018. Having made these commitments, attention now shifts towards how best to teach computer science to diverse populations of high school students who grew up in the age of smart phones, iPads, and Facebook. An increasingly popular strategy being employed is the use of graphical, blocks-based programming environments like Scratch, Snap! and Alice. While these environments have been found to be effective at broadening participation with younger learners, open questions remain about their suitability in high school contexts. In this talk, I will present findings from a two-year study looking at how the design of introductory programming environments affects learners' emerging understandings of computer science concepts and their perceptions of the field of computer science. I will also discuss the affordances of blocks-based programming environments relative to more conventional text-based alternatives.