Storytelling alice motivates middle school girls to learn computer programming

TLDR

Storytelling Alice is a programming environment designed to teach middle school girls computer programming through creating 3D animated stories. It provides high‑level animations, social characters, 3D scenery, and a story‑based tutorial to enable users to create 3D animated stories. Users of Storytelling Alice learned basic programming constructs as well as those using Generic Alice, found both versions equally easy and entertaining, yet Storytelling Alice users were more motivated, spending 42 % more time, three times as likely to sneak extra time, and showing stronger future interest.

Abstract

We describe Storytelling Alice, a programming environment that introduces middle school girls to computer programming as a means to the end of creating 3D animated stories. Storytelling Alice supports story creation by providing 1) a set of high-level animations, that support the use of social characters who can interact with one another, 2) a collection of 3D characters and scenery designed to spark story ideas, and 3) a tutorial that introduces users to writing Alice programs using story-based examples. In a study comparing girls' experiences learning to program using Storytelling Alice and a version of Alice without storytelling support (Generic Alice), we found that users of Storytelling Alice and Generic Alice were equally successful at learning basic programming constructs. Participants found Storytelling Alice and Generic Alice equally easy to use and entertaining. Users of Storytelling Alice were more motivated to program; they spent 42% more time programming, were more than 3 times as likely to sneak extra time to work on their programs, and expressed stronger interest in future use of Alice than users of Generic Alice.