Title: Primary school students' intrinsic motivation to plugged and unplugged approaches to develop computational thinking

Authors: Shan Jiang; Gary K.W. Wong

Addresses: Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ' Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Abstract: This paper compared primary school students' intrinsic motivation to plugged and unplugged approaches to develop computational thinking using a revised Intrinsic Motivation Inventory. A total of 400 fourth-graders who have completed a school-provided coding course participated in the study. The revised instrument examined students' motivation of the two learning approaches from four dimensions: interest, perceived competence, value and relatedness. The main findings of the study are: (1) primary school students show moderate to high motivation to learn computational thinking through both plugged and unplugged approaches; (2) compared to unplugged approach, students gain higher perceived competence from plugged approach; and (3) the revised Intrinsic Motivation Inventory has good psychometric properties in the context of computational thinking except for the close correlation among different dimensions. Finally, implications for developing computational thinking with mobile devices were proposed.

Keywords: computational thinking; coding education; programing; K-12.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMLO.2019.102540

International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, 2019 Vol.13 No.4, pp.336 - 351

Received: 20 Mar 2018
Accepted: 28 Jun 2018
Published online: 30 Sep 2019 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article