Evaluation of the effect of jquery-based block programming on attitude towards programming (Başiskele)

The subject of programming is among the subjects that are difficult to learn in many stages of education. The programming education at secondary level is given to the students within the scope of "Information Technologies and Software" course. One of the ways to carry out the lesson effectively is to use Scratch and similar visual programming languages. However, although visual programming languages are successful in teaching algorithms, there are some limitations in teaching programming. In order to solve this problem, a software was developed by the researcher which includes block logic such as Scratch and JQuery codes corresponding to these blocks. This research was carried out to develop the JQuery based block programming (JTBP) system in order to prepare students for advanced programming languages and to evaluate this software on the effectiveness of changing 6th grade students' attitudes towards programming and to evaluate the software by students' opinions. The study findings showed that the developed JTBP software significantly changed the students' attitudes towards programming, especially after making their own original designs. Students begin to like programming more. An increase was observed in their desire to develop themselves in game design and informatics. However, there was no significant change in motivation towards programming and the importance of programming. When the students' opinions about JTBP software were examined, the students stated that they liked the software and found the software exciting.