Abstract
Purpose The primary purpose of this study is to investigate Emirati students’ perceptions about a two-week online programming course.
Methodology A mixed-method approach was used to report a two-week program experience in which 913 Emirati students engaged in a programming course. During the program, students’ progress and achievements were observed. At the end of the program, a survey was distributed amongst students for them to report on their perceptions about the experience.
Findings - Results revealed that most of the students enjoyed learning programming in an online environment and they fully comprehended the newly presented concepts; however, a few of them experienced various forms of technical difficulties.
Implications - This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the value of programming skills and the role of online learning environments in developing these skills for school students, especially for students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Originality - The outcomes of this study may assist educational policymakers in the UAE to enhance their implementation of online learning, particularly in programming. Moreover, it may help educators better prepare for the problems that students face with online programming.
You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
1 Introduction
Throughout the past decade, programming has been identified as a valuable skill that young students should attempt to acquire in order to meet the demands of a 21st-century workforce (Abiodun & Lekan, 2020; Vico et al., 2019). In the same vein, the paradigm shift that the educational sector experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic led many schools to reorient their pedagogical strategies by adopting ‘online teaching and learning’. Under these rapid changes, new opportunities to learn programming were presented, which emphasised the design and delivery of compelling learning experiences. This study focuses on a United Arab Emirates (UAE) national program to investigate the students’ practises of learning block-based programming, which is based on visual/graphical ways that matches the students’ age. The program was launched by a governmental organisation to teach Emirati children aged 7–14 the basics of programming, with the intentions of creating a new generation that is skilled with contemporary programming language skills.
With the wide spread of technology, many children are tech-savvy from a young age; however, they do not understand the true technical workings of computer technology (Kaplancali & Demirkol, 2017). Additionally, one could argue that most UAE schools do not allocate adequate material and time to teaching computing concepts and skills. This may be due to the priority given to other subjects, like math and science. Therefore, teachers could take advantage of the spread of online learning and direct it in a way to build students' knowledge in computing. In essence, this study attempts to highlight the critical need for programming skills for K-8 students and then investigate the effectiveness of using online learning environments to meet this need.
Investigating students’ practices in online learning environments is one of the current trends that many studies have discussed. However, inadequate attention has been paid to teaching programming to K-8 children (Lewis, 2020; Vico et al., 2019), especially in the online learning context in the UAE. It seems school leaders in the region are unaware of the fact that programming skills are crucial for all students and can be taught using different pedagogical approaches. Therefore, the current study attempts to address this gap in the literature. This paper highlights the importance of programming skills for K-8 students essential to cope with 21st requirements and investigates the students’ practice of learning programming in an online learning classroom, taking into account the students’ levels of understanding. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is driven by attempts to answer the following questions:
-
How effective are online learning environments for acquiring programming skills?
-
What are the students’ reflective perceptions of the online programming course?
2 Literature Review
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) proposed by Davis (1989) was adopted as a theoretical framework for this study. TAM focuses on two major elements that affect an individual's willingness to adopt new technology: perceivable ease of usage and perceivable usefulness (Boot & Charness, 2016). Students who perceive coding as too complex to learn, especially in such online learning environments, will be unlikely to learn it. Chao (2016) and Kong et al. (2018) argue that students may lack enthusiasm and confidence in programming learning because of the belief that programming requires sophisticated concepts. In contrast, students who perceive coding as providing needed future skills and as easy to understand will be more likely to learn (Fig. 1).
Papert (1972, 1980) also holds the view that children are programming the computer rather than computers programming the children in his constructionism theory that has been utilized and reported extensively in computing and technology literature. He believed that school children possess the capacity to learn and develop a deep understanding of programming, if they start learning from a young age. Recently, researchers have explored the adoption of online coding platforms, which may be especially well-suited for school students (Manita et al. 2021; Stephany et al. 2021). These platforms make coding simple for children to grasp; they rely on visual coding, which gamifies activities, uses goals, stories, and discoveries, and provides a more graphically appealing environment. Gray and Thomsen (2021) reveal in a recent study that the students who learn coding through digital play and playful approaches rapidly engage in the problem-solving process and make significant discoveries.
Programming is also a challenging subject for teachers to teach, and little attention has been paid to the teaching of programming in an online learning context (Nariman, 2021; Watson & Li, 2014). A recent study by Galdo et al. (2022) highlighted the fact that online education provides significant difficulties for students when it comes to programming. However, other researchers draw attention to the distinctive benefits of learning programming in an online context. These benefits include evaluating the students’ solutions in real-time and providing instant feedback (Daradoumis et al., 2019). Some authors (e.g., Abiodun & Leka, 2020) have attempted to compare the level of knowledge obtained during an online coding program versus that acquired via traditional methods coding. Despite the findings indicating that both interventions enhanced students’ computational thinking skills and competency, the class activities were limited in the online learning context by difficulty in grouping participants and technical problems caused by the Internet and power outages.
A growing body of literature has investigated the effectiveness of teaching block-based programming, especially for younger students. Tsai (2019) explored students’ perceptions after learning block-based programming and noted that the students found visual programming to be a helpful tool since they could look up relevant material on the Internet and learn from their mistakes. Furthermore, teaching block-based programming may considerably reduce student dropout rates (Benotti et al., 2018) and protect young students from making programming syntax errors (Ouahbi et al., 2015). However, some authors questioned its usefulness, claiming that when students transition to text-based coding, they feel overwhelmed by the language’s structure (De & Do, 2021; Lewis, 2020). Yet, Stead and Blackwell (2014) reported that block syntax could be viewed concurrently with text syntax in most online coding environments, and proven testing with students aged 11–12 have demonstrated that beginning with blocks rather than text improves children's comprehension of text syntax. Together, these studies demonstrate that programming is crucial for all students; nevertheless, some conflicting findings imply that additional research is needed to determine the effectiveness of programming, particularly block-based coding, in an online learning context.
3 Methodology
This paper utilises a mixed-method approach, which includes collecting qualitative data from classroom observation and quantitative data collected from surveys. The mixed-method approach is ideal since it combines the advantages of both (Creswell, 2018). Observation is an appropriate method for this study purpose because it allows the researcher to explore the detailed learning experience of the students in programming through an online environment. The survey aims to validate the qualitative results and avoid the bias that may occur from the researcher as she observes and represents her own work. The sample consists of 913 Emirati students from different schools and Emirates aged 7 to 14. The students were placed into two categories according to their age, the first category had younger students, and the second one had older students. All students had no prior experience with programming and were not familiar with the platform (Table 1).
The program included curriculums from Tynker coding platform. Programming 201 was selected for the younger category and programming 301 for the older one. The curriculum is comprised of nine lessons that include unplugged exercises that teach the students how to work on computational thinking problems and Python programming challenges by creating animated stories, and games (Table 2).
Students’ performance was primarily observed in the first phase of data collection, and students’ lesson progress was considered and added to the observation results. In the second phase, an anonymous survey with close-ended questions was created using SurveyMonkey. The answers measure the participants’ perceptions about learning programming in an online learning environment. To ensure the study’s validity, students who respond with a strong agreement or agreement were counted, additionally, the survey has both positive and negative items to reduce the effects of bias.
This program switched to online learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. As a result, changes have been made to provide the program in online settings. The goal was to prepare students to do the programming tasks remotely, familiarize them with the coding platform (Tynker), and introduce them to basic programming concepts. To do so, we sent them an introductory video that showed them the importance of the program and the basic functionalities that they would need to use during the program two days before the program. A pilot lesson was sent to them one day before the program to ensure that the students were ready for the first day and not have any problem logging into the platform. The program’s sessions were organized using Zoom and WhatsApp groups were used as a way of communication between students and trainers. During the program, the students had to attend one session daily in which the trainers explain all the new concepts of the lesson; after that, the students were heading to Tynker to start working on their lesson based on what they understood from the session. The trainers were following up with all students to make sure that they are working properly and help them overtake any technical difficulty. The program has been developed in accordance with the constructionist theory and its basic principle.
4 Data Analysis and Results
Students faced some technical difficulties that impaired their ability to work on the first day. Some of them were confused about the process of activating their Tynker accounts and accessing their class to begin working. However, with the trainers’ support and following the videos’ instructions, they had begun immersing and working by the end of the day. Regarding the Tynker platform, it allowed students to engage with the tasks in a setting comparable to a real-world environment. Furthermore, Tynker helped teachers collect data on students’ participation and development and track nearly every student’s action. Students’ quiz results indicate that most students completed assigned lessons and made significant progress toward learning to code; on the other hand, a few students fell behind because of the lack of passion in the online learning environment. As a result, these students withdrew due to their inability to navigate the platform and comprehend the coding fundamentals. Surprisingly, the results showed that the withdrawn students from the older category are more than the withdrawn younger ones; moreover, the younger students attended and achieved more progress during the program than the older ones (Table 3).
Five hundred eleven (511) responses were collected from the students, and frequencies and percentages for each question were analysed. The results showed that most students were satisfied with the programming learning experience and eager to join more online programs in the future. The data collected was extracted in PIVOT tables which provided visual charts and analysed accordingly. The first question of the survey measured the students’ overall evaluation on learning to program in the online classroom. The results showed that most of the students are very satisfied with their learning experience (Fig. 2).
The next two questions were about the Tynker platform, how the students found it, and the frequency of using it (Figs. 3 and 4).
The following part was about the trainers’ support. Most of students agreed that the trainers provided the needed support all the time (Fig. 5).
The last part of the survey asked the students about their eagerness to learn more programming in an online context, and how they rate their programming level after the program completion. The results showed that 99% of the students are satisfied with their programming level after this program, while only 1% of the students reported that their programming levels are still weak. Still, when they asked whether they prefer to join the future programs online or on campus, 55% of students preferred to participate in online programs, 44% of students showed their desire to join the program on campus, while 2% of the students showed their unwillingness in participating any future program (Figs. 6 and 7).
5 Discussion of The Results
This paper addresses the pedagogical concerns regarding learning coding in an online learning context; it aims to examine Emirati students’ performance following a two-week online coding session. By observing the students’ interaction during the program, the authors investigated the students’ performance and challenges of online programming activities. The analysis suggests that most students had positive attitudes towards online coding and got many benefits from it; for instance, they can work at their own pace and in their own style to learn and experiment with the subject. Instructors, in addition, have less administrative work to do, and they can use the course content in various ways. However, despite the many benefits of this learning mode, some students experienced some form of technical difficulty in programming and a lack of interaction with the online environment.
Turning now to the survey results, two survey questions obtained a 100% agreement. As can be observed by looking at the results, these items are as follows: the students’ programming skills have been advanced, and trainers have provided full support during the program. Additionally, the results showed 97% agreement of students’ eagerness to join more programming courses in the future. These agreements show that the participants have positive perceptions towards learning to code and agreed that they got many benefits from the online learning environment. However, when they were asked whether they wanted to attend more programs online or in the traditional classroom, they separated into two sections; 54.6 showed a willingness to participate in the future courses online, while 43.6 preferred to participate in the traditional classes. Other results from the survey show that some barriers prevented a few students from fully understanding online coding. This can be supported by the results that show that these students are not willing to join more coding programs. By comparing these findings to the literature, it is clear that despite the rapid expansion of online learning environments and the numerous advantages they provide in terms of creating courses that simulate more traditional classroom settings, particularly in programming, more research is needed to better understand the difficulties and barriers students face when they learn to code online, and how can we overcome them.
6 Conclusion
This study used a mixed-method approach to determine how Emirati students perceived programming in an online learning environment. The analysis of the qualitative results revealed encouraging results on students’ general perceptions of programming, with many achieving successes. While some reported technical challenges, the majority were more skilled than expected at resolving them. The findings indicated that students of this age could benefit from online learning programs. Also, the quantitative results validated the initial qualitative findings by elucidating all of the variables encountered by the Emirati students who participated in the program. The study suggests that a framework is needed to assist teachers in capturing student variety and implementing, evaluating, and determining what must be done in the online learning environment. Additionally, the authors recommend learning coding in various educational settings, such as the blended setting, where teachers are present and can facilitate the learning process.
This study added to the growing body of literature on the importance of programming skills for students and the impact of online learning environments in acquiring this skill, additionally, it paved the way for more research to integrate computational thinking and programming approaches in different learning approaches. The outcomes of this study may assist educational policymakers in better implementation of online learning, particularly in programming. The study can also help educators better prepare for the problems that students may confront with online programming and shed light on prospects for expansion within it, however, it has some limitations that may affect its generalizability. The participants included were all Emirati students having the same racial, cultural, and social backgrounds. Future studies are needed to conduct a similar investigation in different cultural contexts. The study also did not consider cheating and communication between students. It is necessary to determine whether online programming affects the quality of code presented by learners and the quality of communication with each other.
References
Abiodun, O. S., & Lekan, A. J. (2020). Children perceptions of the effectiveness of online coding as a supplement to in-person boot camps. International Journal Scientific Advances, 1(3), 187–191.
Benotti, L., Aloi, F., Bulgarelli, F. & Gomez, M. J. (2018). The effect of a web-based coding tool with automatic feedback on students’ performance and perceptions. SIGCSE 2018 - Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Baltimore, 21–24 February. Association for Computing Machinery, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159579. Accessed 29 Feb 2022
Boot, W. R. & Charness, N. (2016). Handbook of the Psychology of Aging. Schaie, K. W. & Willis, S. L. (eds). The Academic Press. San Diego. Ch.20.
Chao, P. Y. (2016). Exploring students’ computational practice, design and performance of problem-solving through a visual programming environment. Computers Education, 95, 202–215.
Creswell, J. (2018). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative & Mixed Methods Approaches (5th ed.). Sage.
Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), 319–340.
Daradoumis, T., MarquèsPuig, J. M., Arguedas, M., & CalvetLiñan, L. (2019). Analyzing students’ perceptions to improve the design of an automated assessment tool in online distributed programming. Computers Education, 128, 159–170.
De, A. & Do, N. (2021). Towards a Live Programming Platform for K-12. Master. Dissertation. University of Porto
Galdo, A. C., Celepkolu, M., Lytle, N. & Boyer, K. E. (2022). Pair Programming in a Pandemic: Understanding Middle School Students’ Remote Collaboration Experiences. Mehmet Celepkolu.
Kaplancali, U. T., & Chiu, Z. (2017). Teaching coding to children: a methodology for kids 5+. International Journal Elementary Education, 6(4), 32. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijeedu.20170604.11
Kong, S. C., Chiu, M. M., & Lai, M. (2018). A study of primary school students’ interest, collaboration attitude, and programming empowerment in computational thinking education. Computers Education, 127, 178–189.
Lewis, S. (2020). Analysis of how primary-aged children learn to code: A Year 5 case study using Ev3 LEGO® robotics and stimulated recall. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Central Queensland.
Manita, F., Durão, S. & Aguiar, A. (2021): Faculdade De Engenharia Da Universidade Do Porto Towards a Live Programming Platform for K-12.
Nariman, D. (2021). Impact of the interactive e-learning instructions on effectiveness of a programming course. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. Springer, pp. 588–597
Ouahbi, I., Kaddari, F., Darhmaoui, H., Elachqar, A., & Lahmine, S. (2015). Learning basic programming concepts by creating games with scratch programming environment. Procedia - Social Behavioral Sciences, 191, 1479–1482.
Papert, S. (1972). Teaching children thinking. Programmed Learning Educational Technology, 9(5), 245–255.
Papert, S. (1980). Personal computing and its impact on education. The computer in the school: Tutor, tool, tutee, pp.197–202.
Stead, A. G., & Blackwell, A. (2014). Learning syntax as notational expertise when using Drawbridge. Psychology of programming interest group annual conference. University of Sussex. Brighton. 25–27 June.
Stephany, F., Braesemann, F. & Graham, M. (2021): Coding together–coding alone: the role of trust in collaborative programming. Information Communication and Society.Routledge, 24(13), 1944–1961.
Tsai, C. Y. (2019). Improving students’ understanding of basic programming concepts through visual programming language: The role of self-efficacy. Computers Human Behavior, 95, 224–232.
Vico, F., Masa, J. & Garcia, R. (2019). ToolboX. Academy: Coding & Artificial Intelligence made easy for kids, Big Data for educators. Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies. Madrid, Spain.
Watson, C., & Li, F. W. (2014). Failure rates in introductory programming revisited. Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on innovation & Technology in computer science education, Uppsala. Sweden: ACM
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Elsawah, W., Charles, T. (2023). Investigating Emirati Students’ Practices of Learning Block-Based Programming in an Online Learning Context: Evidence from a UAE National Program. In: Al Marri, K., Mir, F., David, S., Aljuboori, A. (eds) BUiD Doctoral Research Conference 2022. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 320. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27462-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27462-6_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-27461-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-27462-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)