Journal of Computer Assisted Learning

1.1 The aim of the research

The aim of this research is to examine the fact that whether the use of digital story design activities in teaching applications of programming for secondary school 5th‐grade students has influence on learning of programming concepts, programming self‐efficacy, and programming participation.

In line with this objective, answers are needed to find for questions below.

• What is the level of students' academic achievement, programming self‐efficacy, and participation before and after programming teaching through digital storytelling and direct instruction method?

• Is there a meaningful difference between the contribution level of programming teaching application through digital storytelling and direct instruction method to students' level of participation, academic achievement, and programming self‐efficacy?

  • The following hypotheses have been tested for this problem.

    • There is a significant difference between the achievement scores of final test in favour of the experimental group when the self‐efficacy pretest scores of the students in the experimental group in which the teaching of programming with the digital story is carried out and the scores of the students of the control group in which the teaching with straight expression is performed are checked.
    • There is a significant difference between the participation scores of final test in favour of the experimental group when the self‐efficacy pretest scores of the students in the experimental group in which the teaching of programming with the digital story is carried out and the scores of the students of the control group in which the teaching with straight expression is performed are checked.
    • There is a significant difference between the self‐efficacy scores of final test in favour of the experimental group when the self‐efficacy pretest scores of the students in the experimental group in which the teaching of programming with the digital story is carried out and the scores of the students of the control group in which the teaching with straight expression is performed are checked.

• What are the experiences and opinions of the students regarding digital story design and programming teaching process?

2.1 Why digital story

Today, one of the most important challenges in the learning‐teaching process is creating meaningful and engaging learning experiences and providing learners' participation in this process (Sarıtepeci, 2016). Learning through experience during the education process is the most efficient way of ensuring and transferring the permanence of learning. In the literature, digital story seems to be based on active learning theory based on constructivist approach (Dupain & Maguire, 2007; Yang & Wu, 2012). According to the active learning theory, participation is considered as a prerequisite for learning (Fredricks et al., 2004; Guo, Kim & Rubin, 2014).

In the literature it was stated that digital story helps students to understand complex learning content by creating interest, participation, and motivation, facilitating student collaboration and organization of ideas (Robin, 2006, 2008; Van Gils, 2005). Process of digital story creation consists of four stages: preproduction; production; postproduction; and distribution (Robin, 2006). Process of digital story creation seems to be a process based on constructivist learning theory (Yang & Wu, 2012).

In process of digital story creation, a systematic teaching process is followed and this process is integrated with digital technologies by supporting creative thinking and writing skills. Process of digital story creation is an effective teaching approach for creating a creative and open‐ended learning environment for teachers and students (Yang & Wu, 2012). In addition, digital storytelling is a useful educational tool that combines innovative teaching and learning practices with digital media (Dakich, 2008) and is an effective method to support active learning processes that can be used by teachers from primary to higher education (Bromberg, Techatassanasoontorn, & Andrade, 2013; Xu, Park, & Baek, 2011).

The student will actively participate in the process of digital story creation. Participation of the students is an inevitable necessity especially in the learning process of the digital story which is created by the student. In this process, learners will have the opportunity to configure and reflect their own learning about content units through the digital story that they have prepared. In addition, the digital story process requires the learner to follow the steps of project creation within the context of a content unit. The use of digital stories in the programming process, which is a complex process and involves many different skills, will allow many different commands and features to be used together. On the other hand, there are many studies that showed that the digital story development approach improves creative thinking ability (Ohler, 2013; Yang & Wu, 2012). Creative thinking is also an important skill for programming. In this context, it is expected that the digital story development approach will contribute to improving the programming skills of the students.

2.2 Digital story use in programming teaching

In addition to traditional story design, digital story design consists of stages involving multimedia elements such as sound, music, animation, video into a designed story, and the vocalization of the story (Porter, 2005; Robin, 2006; Rule, 2010). Digital story design is a new learning approach for learning that is enriched by multimedia elements used in learning–teaching processes (Robin, 2006).

Providing participation and motivation in programming learning processes is one of the most important problems (Kim, Song, & Lee, 2009); therefore, it is important to present interesting and different activities to provide students' active participation (Jakoš & Verber, 2017). According to Law, Lee, and Yu (2010), active participation and programming learning are related with each other, and it is emphasized that teaching for gaining programming skills will be impossible if learner does not attend the class sufficiently. The main purpose to use digital story is to facilitate the transition of learning into an active and interesting process (Bromberg et al., 2013). Digital stories can be used differently in education (the story scenario can be prepared by the teacher, or the student can create his own digital story; Robin, 2008). If the student creates the digital story in the process of digital story design, the program will provide active participation in the process of developing the program by following the steps of program development according to the content pattern determined during the learning process. In addition, the student creates a multimedia product using the appropriate technological tools and materials in the framework of the story s/he designs and ultimately realizes technology integration. Taking these reasons into consideration, digital storytelling can be an appropriate approach in terms of programming teaching. On the other hand, digital story design activities play an important role in the acquisition and development of some 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication for students (Price, Strodtman, Brough, Lonn, & Luo, 2015). It also supports many creative skills that are tried to contribute to students such as research, collecting and organizing information, creating new ideas, designing, writing, expressing themselves, putting out products, solving problems are supported in programming teaching (Csizmar Dalal, 2009; Dupain & Maguire, 2007; Hathorn, 2005; Sarıca & Usluel, 2016; Yang & Wu, 2012). At this point, it can be predicted that digital storytelling will increase the programming achievement (Park, 2014).

Burke and Kafai (2012) investigate how the coding process of computer programs can help children in developing storytelling and their creative writing skills. In the relative study, it is emphasized that the process of the creation of program coding is not only related with the knowledge in computer science, but also it contributes to develop creative storytelling and writing skills. According to Nam (2017), digital story can be defined as an audio‐visual approach that engages students in learning motivation and the development of problem‐solving skills, to keep their visual and audial senses in such a way that printed textbooks can never realize. Burke (2012) carried out a study that develops story design with secondary school students to improve their coding and writing skills by using Scratch program. In the study, it is found that students effectively use the basic programming concepts (i.e., sequence, iteration, condition, event handling, and parallel execution) to design digital stories. Besides, students develop positive attitude towards programming after teaching. Although there are studies that emphasize that storytelling can facilitate the coding learning in the literature, excluding the studies that search how the use of digital storytelling can lead affective reactions related with academic achievement and programming, there are no examples.

2.3 Scratch as a tool for digital story design

Scratch, a program aims to teach programming, is a programming environment designed by Lifelong Kindergarten at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory specifically for 8–16 age group of individuals. Scratch (scratch. mit.edu) is a visual programming tool that allows K–12 students to create stories, games, animations, and interactive presentations. Scratch program allows flow of events by dragging–dropping the code blocks and combining them (Grover & Pea, 2013; Resnick et al., 2009). There are various characters, scenes, and sounds in the library of this program, and this program has an editor that allows them to be edited.

Like Scratch program, programming environments that hold the visual foreground have facilitated programming teaching (Shin & Park, 2014). Due to the drag‐and‐drop structure of the Scratch code blocks and their similarity to the puzzle pieces, it seems to fit the theoretical basis of the constructivist approach (Buckleitner, 2007). On the other hand, Scratch has the ability to combine various media types (pictures, sounds, videos, etc.) to help develop 21st century skills (Romero, 2010). Scratch, which enables to design projects with various multimedia elements, can be used in several lessons, apart from algorithm and programming teaching.

Scratch's prominent visual features and its basic interface are seen as internal motivation for students, and it enables to develop logical thinking (Calder, 2010). In the studies, it is seen that students develop a positive point of view regarding programming while using Scratch, and their experiences are positive (Fesakis & Serafeim, 2009; Smith & Neumann, 2014). Thus, Scratch is thought as an appropriate educational tool for digital story design in programming teaching.

3.1 Research design

This research is designed with mixed methods. It was designed according to Creswell's (2012) mixed research strategies, “explanatory sequential mixed methods design.” Creswell demonstrated that using quantitative and qualitative methods together would provide a better understanding of research problems than using two approaches separately. For the purpose of the research, quantitative research methods were used first. The quantitative data collection tools were applied to 62 students. Qualitative research methods were used for a more detailed examination in the direction of the analysis of the quantitative data obtained. Within this scope, 32 students in the experimental group were interviewed. In the quantitative dimension, quasi‐experimental research design was employed with pretest–posttest control groups. The experimental design used in the research is presented in Table 1.

3.2 Study group

The research is conducted with 62 participants studying at 5th grade in Ankara. Within the scope of the research, secondary school 5th‐grade students who have no experience in programming and take the course named as Information Technologies and Software are preferred. The students are assigned to experimental and control groups in a neutral manner.

Thirty‐two students who formed the study group are in the experimental group, and 30 students are in the control group. Approximately 41.9% of the study group are female, and 58.1% are male; 34.4% of the experimental group comprised of women, and 65.6% of them are male. Fifty per cent of control group is female, and 50% is male.

3.3 Process

The implementation of the research has lasted for 10 weeks. During the implementation process, digital storytelling and related materials were used for learning process in the experimental group, whereas direct instruction was used in the control group. At the end of the process, volunteer students were interviewed.

Application was made in the course of “programming technology and software” where programming is taught. The scope of the course aims to teach the programming concepts effectively. In this context, digital story designing activities were carried out in the experimental group whereas straight expression was used in control group for the teaching of programming concepts.

In the experimental application, stages of digital story designing determined by Robin (2008) were used. First, students began to research to determine the topics that are based on their experiences, lives, and interests. Most of the students have chosen subjects related to science, social and language, and, stories, tales that have social messages.

After the preliminary work in order to produce an effective story, students were asked to write their stories. After writing the story, the stage of storyboarding was started. Storyboards were built on paper with various desktop applications or online tools (see Figures 1 and 2).

Using the storyboard as a guide, images, sounds, and animations were created. At this stage, the students explored the characters on the internet or drew their own. At this stage, the written story texts and the dialogues in this story were vocalized by the students. At this stage, the students used the sound recorder and the Scratch software. At this stage, students have combined multimedia elements such as text, sound, and visuals they have prepared in the Scratch program according to the storyboards. Scratch commands were used to control the events in the scenario, after the multimedia elements that would be included in each scene were added. Many events were realized with programming commands, such as adding visuals or video transition effects, adjusting transition and sound timings, and adding background music, audio narration, and background music volume.

Finally, students shared their digital stories (see Figures 1 and 2) that were prepared with Scratch with classmates in class and others in an online environment. It has been seen that the generated stories were mostly directed towards the subjects related to lectures.

3.4 Data collection tools

3.5 Data analysis

One‐way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and descriptive statistics were used in the analysis of quantitative data. In the analysis of qualitative data, content analysis method was used. Data collected through interview forms were examined by themes and codes. To ensure reliability among coders, 10% of the data were coded by two coders. The coding is made by two coders to ensure reliability of the research, and consistency was calculated as 90.2% among coders. In calculating this ratio, Miles and Huberman's (1994) “reliability = (number of consensus)/(total consensus+total divergence) formula was used. Two coders reached a compromise for differential codes.

Academic achievement, participation, and programming self‐efficacy scores of the experimental and control groups were examined through quantitative methods.

ANCOVA was used to compare academic achievement pretest–posttest scores of the groups. Hypotheses of this test were controlled before analysis. Findings related to pretest scores were examined and found no significant difference between pretest‐related groups. ANCOVA was used to reduce the error variance and to remove the differences between the groups at the beginning of the practice (Mertler & Vannatta, 2002), although there is no difference between the groups in terms of pretest scores.

In order to apply ANCOVA, it has been examined whether the assumptions of this analysis were met.

In this context, firstly average scores were compared and samples were found to be unrelated. The skewness and kurtosis values of the dependent variable were examined, and the distribution was found to be normal. For each of the other assumptions of the ANCOVA, the homogeneity of the variance scores of the dependent variable was checked by the Levene test. In this technique, variance was considered to be homogeneous if p value is greater than .05 (p > .05; Field, 2005). Following this assumption, the Group × pretest interaction in the Custom Model for the ANCOVA was checked under the assumption of equality of regression coefficients (slopes) within the groups, and this assumption was also found to be ensured. Finally, the linear relationship between the dependent variable and the covariate was tested using the Pearson correlation analysis technique. It is effective when the relationship between the dependent variable and the covariate is greater than 0.30 (Field, 2005), and there is a relationship of r = .68 between the variables.

4.1 Qualitative findings regarding students' thoughts

Theme that views about digital story design activities in programing teaching for students, codes placed under themes, and frequency of coding of these codes are presented in Tables 7-10.

When student opinions in Table 7 are examined, it is understood that students view digital story design activities in programming teaching as a process that improves many skills. When the codes are examined, it is seen that students mention about research (f = 8) and questioning (f = 8) skills while explaining the contributions of digital story design activities. Afterwards, technical skills (f = 6), problem‐solving (f = 5), reflective thinking (f = 5), algorithmic thinking (f = 5), designing skills (f = 3), and creativity skills (f = 3) are used in this explanation, respectively. Here are some examples of students' views:

I have done constant research to design digital stories in the class. I scanned my books to find a subject. I looked at my books to write a scenario. I used internet to find characters. [S2]

While developing a digital story, both scenario and application had to be implemented. On the other hand, I had to search the Internet and find out the character that I wanted and organize the ones that I couldn't find. I learned the computer better. [S4]

When the student opinions in Table 8 are examined, it is seen that the activities performed in the process of digital story designing will mostly contribute to student‐student interaction. Later, it is thought to be beneficial for student‐teacher interaction (f = 10) and student‐content interaction (f = 5), respectively. Here are some examples from student views:

I did not know how to use a computer or write code. I applied constantly to create a digital story. [S1]

When I was designing a digital story, I mostly got the help from my friends. I've learned better from them. [S7]

When the student opinions in Table 9 are examined, it is stated that the use of digital story in programming lesson is the most remarkable, fun, and different way of learning. Later on, it is thought that they favoured and contributed positively to the accommodation of multimedia media (f = 11) and the features of Scratch program (f = 6), respectively. When examining the other subthemes, the main benefits of the student's favourite aspects are thought to be facilitating the learning of programming concepts (f = 5), increasing motivation for programming learning (f = 5), personalization possibilities (f = 5), using digital environment (f = 5), coexistence of practice and activity (f = 3), developing positive attitudes for programming and increasing satisfaction (f = 3), positive cognitive participation and encouraging effort (f = 3), providing permanent learning (f = 3), and product development and turning imagination to production (f = 3). When the views of students on the process are examined, it is stated that not using the appropriate pictures and scenes in digital story is not welcomed by the students. Here are some examples from students' views:

The biggest challenge I had was finding the pictures I wanted while composing the story I imagined. [S9]

The part I did not like was that I could not make a scene in Scratch while creating a digital story. Scratch would have been better if it was in a structure that made the stage pass. [S20]

When the student opinions in Table 10 are examined, it is found that the most frequently used textbooks were used to create digital stories (f = 11), scripts were inspired from cartoons (f = 8), Scratch library is mostly used for character selecting (f = 8), the process of creating digital stories allows many commands in Scratch to be applied (f = 8), and it is observed that the fact that Scratch has many visualizations is liked by the students. Here are some examples from student views:

I first used the Turkish textbook to determine the subject. I searched the internet to find the characters. But mostly I used characters and scenes in Scratch. [S18].

I really liked Scratch. Especially the visual. There are many beautiful characters and scenes. [S22].

5.1 Results

In this study, the effects of using digital story design activities in programming instructional practices on academic achievement, participation, programming self‐efficacy, and student experience are examined. The level of students' learning of programming concepts in programming instruction process, programming self‐efficacy, and participation levels are found to be significant and more positive. When the literature is examined (Price et al., 2015), it is seen that the digital story plays an important role in the acquisition and development of some 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication, which will support this finding. Csizmar Dalal (2009) reported that many creative skills such as researching, gathering information, organizing information, creating new ideas, designing, writing, expressing themselves, putting out products, and solving problems are being supported by digital storytelling activities. Therefore, the finding that programming activities will be effective with digital story activities (Park, 2014) coincides with the findings obtained in this study.

In the study, it is seen that students mostly describe the contributions of digital story designing activities as research and inquiry skills in general. This is followed by technical skills, problem solving, and reflective thinking skills. In general, when student opinions are examined, it appears that digital story development activities are related to the development of other thinking skills. When the literature is examined (Price et al., 2015), it is emphasized that digital story design activities seem to be important for students to acquire and develop some 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. Again, the description made by International Society for Technology in Education (2015) defines information processing thinking as being handled with creative thinking, algorithmic thinking, critical thinking, and problem‐solving skills. These skills are also very important skills for teaching programming. From here, it can be said that the digital story development process and its influences provide good opportunities for students to learn to program and make programming teaching enjoyable.

The students claim that the student‐student interaction mostly takes place in the process. It is remarkable that the student‐content interaction is at the last place. This finding suggests that students prefer most of their peers in unrealized topics and prefer to learn from their peers. The existence of a positive relationship between learning and interactivity in the literature is often expressed (Swan, 2001; Valasek, 2001). According to Wagner (1998), interaction is important in the realization of active learning. Interaction, on the other hand, allows learners to share ideas, to assess their performance with their own observations, new knowledge to be more meaningful, and increased interest and motivation to learn and reflect on their learning. In the work done by Durak (2016), students are first contacted with friends and teachers in challenging tasks related to scheduling, and they prefer course contents at the very last. In the research conducted by Kim et al. (2009), it is observed that positive experiences about programming, positive attitude towards the course, process contribution and expectations of appreciation and motivation levels are affected in primary school students' interaction of programming education. It can be said that many factors such as internal and external motivational attitudes are influential in the process of student interaction.

Students have emphasized that the process is mostly enjoyable and entertaining; however, the most unpopular is the process of finding objects to use in the digital story. From this point of view, the emphasis is placed on the need for different, visual, multimedia learning environments in the students' opinions. In support of these findings, Durak (2016) notes that Scratch's visual orientation is a good motivating factor for students in programming instruction. What students do not like in the process seems to be a reflection of the difficulties that students have had in learning programming and transferring it.

According to the student experience of the digital story development process, it was noticed that the subjects are mostly drawn by using textbooks, the scenarios are generally inspired from cartoons, the Scratch library is mostly used in the selection of characters, the process of creating digital stories allows the execution of many scripts in Scratch, and that Scratch is attracted by the students due to its visualization feature. From these findings, it can be said that the digital story development process gives opportunity to apply the basic elements of programming and to use it in all aspects of the Scratch program. In the research conducted by Sarıtepeci (2016) and Kim et al. (2009), it was observed that primary school students' positive experiences about environment; their interaction with the environment; the positive attitude of the environment; and the contribution, appreciation, and motivation levels were increased in programming education, and this increased the programming achievement. Similarly, Wang, Huang, and Hwang (2014) investigated the effects of the learning environment on the students' learning achievements in the 7th‐grade students and found that they increased the attitude and motivation towards the curriculum based on the game and animation preparation in the direction of the students' personal preferences.

5.2 Suggestions and limitations

Within the scope of this study, the effects of digital story development activities in programming teaching are examined. In the study, it is found that students are challenged in the digital story development process. The findings of this work provide conclusions in order to develop a specific instructional design for instructional material designers or trainers and to learn digital storytelling programming by presenting an application example from the digital story development and teaching material design process.

The study has certain limitations regarding the study of the teaching process, digital story designing skills, and products of the students. In digital storytelling‐based programming learning environments, it is recommended to develop online teaching materials such as checklists or rubrics to examine the teaching activities of teachers and the learning activities of students. Additionally, it is important for teachers to develop tutorial strategies for different topics of computer science by effectively using digital storytelling and to develop instructional resources to facilitate the social presence and interactions of students. During the application phase of this study, students had some difficulties while creating the digital story. In order to overcome these difficulties and facilitate the process, teachers can give students instructions to assist them in fulfilling their role as screenwriter, technician, character picker, and narrator in a faithful manner.

One of the limitations of this study was the small sample size, which limits the statistical power of the findings of this study. Further research should be done to explore the deep relationship between digital storytelling backed student achievement, and programming self‐efficacy and experience.