Exploring the “Low-Floors” of the Scratch Coding Environment: A Case Study of Middle School Students Experiences with Scratch Tutorials
Open Access
Author:
Ashley, Robert
Graduate Program:
Learning, Design, and Technology
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
July 03, 2019
Committee Members:
Dr. Gabriela Richard, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor Dr. Tyler Hollett, Committee Member Dr. Susan Land, Committee Member
Keywords:
Scratch Case Study Thick Description Scaffolding Tutorials
Abstract:
An area of literature that is lacking on Scratch is examining the interactions of students while
they learn Scratch. In the literature the use of tutorials is often alluded to but never explored in
detail. This study is a small portion of a design-based research project focusing on how middle
and high school learners learn and engage in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and
Mathematics (STEAM) activities. It has been taught three times prior in several forms, including
as a summer camp, in-school program and an after-school program for middle and high school
aged students in urban and rural contexts in the Northeast United States. A variety of data
sources were collected during this study, such as pre/post surveys, video recordings of pre/post
interviews, videotaped observations and field notes of the participants as they navigating the
Scratch tutorials, as well as artifacts of the finished programming script created in the tutorial. In
order to better understand the nature of the tutorials in Scratch I conducted a qualitative case
study to better understand how Scratch users engage with the tutorials provided by Scratch and
to answer these two research questions: 1) How do middle school students (ages 11-13) engage
with Scratch tutorials during a maker workshop? 2) Does experience level affect their level
of engagement?
