Research Article

Autonomous learning behaviors in an online coding community: A comparison between project viewing/playing and code remixing in Scratch using Benford’s law

Ray Y. Shen 1 *
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1 Independent Researcher, Potomac, MD, USA* Corresponding Author
Journal of Digital Educational Technology, 5(1), January 2025, ep2501, https://doi.org/10.30935/jdet/15808
Submitted: 23 June 2024, Published: 02 January 2025
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ABSTRACT

Previous studies of code-learning behaviors have been conducted in structured educational settings, utilizing student engagement metrics such as homework submission, task completion, and interactions with instructors. These types of metrics, however, are absent in open online coding platforms. To characterize autonomous code-learning behaviors in an online community, this work applied Benford’s law to analyze user engagement metrics of trending projects on Scratch, the world’s largest online coding platform for young learners. Statistical analysis revealed that the extent of conformity to Benford’s law is independent of the project categories. Of all four user engagement metrics, the views metric exhibited the strongest conformity to Benford’s law, while the remixes metric–the metric most closely associated with code-learning behaviors–showed the greatest deviation from Benford’s law. This was confirmed by Pearson’s χ² test, Nigrini’s (2012) mean absolute deviation test, and an evaluation of the mantissas of the user engagement metrics. This study demonstrates that the extent of conformity to Benford’s law can be used as novel features for characterizing autonomous code-learning behaviors in unsupervised online settings. The results of this work pave the way for future studies to correlate the extent of conformity to Benford’s law with specific elements of code that attract autonomous learning, providing opportunities to optimize the content and design of online coding platforms.
Keywords: computer science education, computational thinking skills, code-learning behaviors, data mining, Benford’s law

CITATION (APA)

Shen, R. Y. (2025). Autonomous learning behaviors in an online coding community: A comparison between project viewing/playing and code remixing in Scratch using Benford’s law. Journal of Digital Educational Technology, 5(1), ep2501. https://doi.org/10.30935/jdet/15808

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