THE USE OF PROGRAMMING AS A TOOL FOR DESIGN BASED LEARNING IN BIOLOGY A classroom experiment in a 5th grade class

Abstract

The purpose of education is to prepare students for the future. The goal of integrating STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) into education is to develop scientific and technological knowledge in students, to prepare them for an advanced technological and democratic society, and to broaden their perspective of how to use, create, and make decisions about technology, and not less important, to prepare them for their future jobs (Honey, Pearson, and Schweingruber, 2014; Eng lish and King, 2015; Holbrook, 2017; Lachapelle et al., 2018). This study with class 5C began in the spring semester of 2021, in a school in Möl ndal, during weeks 15-17 (april-may). Control and experimental groups were set up. Both groups used the same materials. In the control group, the common methods of teaching-learning were used, such as reading facts from books, watching films, an swering questions based on the films and texts, writing texts, and conducting group discussions. The experiment group used the same material to reach the content, but they were supposed to use it as needed to create their own game with Scratch. Stu dents utilized the material that they thought was relevant in the experiment group. According to this study, a positive learning environment is created around designings games and students have expressed happiness and are more willing to collaborate with peers. The results gathered from pretest and posttest show that students who participated programming with Scratch showed significant knowledge development. Both students and the teacher mention that the time was very limited, and they wish to invest more time to complete their game and even to do more projects like this. The main issues that were considered as a hindrance have been competence, time, curriculum, and assessment.