Use of Arithmetic Operation Skills in Block Based Programming Environments: A Comparative Case Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the 7th grade middle schoolstudents' processes of creating and calculating arithmeticexpressions in the code.org block based coding environments. Forthis purpose, the reasons of students' behaviors in codingenvironments are tried to be revealed by comparing them withstudent behaviors in traditional environments. The participants ofthe study, which was conducted as a comparative case study, arecomposed of 10 students studying at a public school. ArithmeticOperation Test developed by the researchers, Student Screen Recordstaken from the code.org platform, Student Opinion Form consistingof three open-ended questions, Unstructured Interviews held with thestudents and Field Notes were used as data collection tools in thisstudy. Descriptive analyzes were performed in order to compare thedata obtained from different cases and the analysis results wereexpressed in different categories. In conclusion, it has been observedthat the students were not as successful in coding environments asexpected and use arithmetical operation skills more successfully intraditional environments than block based coding environments. Inparticular, it has been revealed that the use of blocks and the way inwhich code.org handles arithmetic operations cause the studentscannot transfer their existing knowledge to the codingenvironments.