Understanding students’ abstractions in block-based programming environments: A performance based evaluation

The Effects of Instructional Environments and Cognitive Abilities on Abstraction Performance

“…When literature is examined, abstraction was mainly studied with university students as participants (see Bennedsen & Caspersen, 2008;Hazzan & Kramer, 2007;Hill et al, 2008). Studies with high school students (Sakhnini & Hazzan, 2008;Taub et al, 2014), middle school students (Statter & Armoni, 2017;Statter & Armoni, 2020), and elementary school students (Çakıroğlu et al, 2021;Statter & Armoni, 2017) are limited. Thus, further research is needed for each participant group so that the results obtained for teaching abstraction can be generalized and meta-analyzes can also be done.…”

“…Research about teaching abstraction in CS were investigated mostly with university students (Bennedsen & Caspersen, 2006;Bennedsen & Caspersen, 2008;Hazzan & Kramer, 2007), followed by high school students (Sakhnini & Hazzan, 2008;Taub et al, 2014), middle school students (Statter & Armoni, 2017;Statter & Armoni, 2020), and elementary school students (Çakıroğlu et al, 2021;Statter & Armoni, 2017). Abstraction has been explored mostly in programming courses (Çakıroğlu et al, 2021;Bennedsen & Caspersen, 2006;Bennedsen & Caspersen, 2008;Waite et al, 2018). In addition, some researchers have investigated abstraction in CS (Hazzan, 2003;Hill et al, 2008;Statter & Armoni, 2017), artificial intelligence (Saribatur et al, 2021), mathematics (Çetin & Dubinsky, 2017;Hazzan, 2003), and physics (Taub et al, 2014) courses.…”

Supporting the Self-Regulated Learning of Primary School Students With a Performance-Based Assessment Platform for Programming Education

“…In the performance phase of SRL (Zimmerman & Moylan, 2009), it is vital for learners to effectively assess their current performance to determine whether to maintain or change their strategy (Panadero et al, 2018; Zimmerman, 2002). Because of this close connection between performance monitoring and strategy selection, performance-based assessment can be beneficial in fostering students’ SRL and evaluating their abilities in an authentic context (Ali & Hanna, 2022; Çakıroğlu et al, 2021; Van der Graaf et al, 2021). Performance-based assessment can motivate students’ learning, stimulate the expression of their creativity, and provide SRL opportunities by helping students link the desired outcomes to the regulation of their learning behaviour.…”

A Comparative Case Study to Experiences of High School Students Using Text-Based versus Hybrid-Based Environments in Programming Education

“…In addition, it can be preferred easy-to-use block-based programming environments to facilitate algorithmic thinking. Thus, an opportunity arises to reduce the negative emotions that discourage beginner programmers from acquiring programming skills (Asai et al, 2018;Çakıroğlu, Çevik, Köşeli, & Karaman, 2021;Mumcu, Mumcu, & Çakıroğlu, 2021;Tsai, 2019;Topalli & Cagiltay, 2018;Yukselturk & Altiok, 2017). A block-based programming environment consists of code blocks with various colours and features.…”

“…In order to create an algorithm, puzzle pieces-like block structures are easily combined by drag and drop (Gomez et al, 2019;López, Otero, & García-Cervigón, 2021). Thanks to block-based environments, such as Scratch, Code.org, and Alice, students make fewer syntax errors and have low cognitive challenges (Çakıroğlu et al, 2021;Mumcu et al, 2021;Rahaman, Mahfuj, Haque, Shekdar, & Islam, 2020;Tsai, 2019), and they also have a more positive attitude towards learning programming (Seraj, Katterfeldt, Bub, Autexier, & Drechsler, 2019;Yukselturk & Altiok, 2017). Hsu and Hwang (2021) have revealed that students engaging with block-based programming tasks have low programming anxiety and a more enjoyable learning experience.…”