Unraveling the Effects of Block-Based Visual Programming on Students’ Computational Thinking

Nowadays, computational thinking has been the core necessary skill for students who want to succeed in the 21 ^st century. Block-based visual programming (BBVP) is one of the most widely used ways to develop student computational thinking. However, its impact on student computational thinking is mixed in the education field. This study conducts a meta-analysis to compare the impacts of BBVP and textual programming on student computational thinking. The result covering 24 independent studies and 2,441 students indicates that BBVP has a large positive effect ( SMD = 0.887, CI = [0.625, 1.148], p < 0.001) on student computational thinking. We also conduct moderator analysis and find that class size, treatment duration, test type, BBVP type, subject, learning method, and region significantly moderate BBVP’s impacts on students computational thinking. Finally, major findings, recommendations, and limitations are provided.