Computational thinking (CT) education reaches only a fraction of young children, in part because CT learning tools often require expensive hardware or fluent literacy. Block-based programming environments address these challenges through symbolic graphical interfaces, but users often need instructor support to advance. Alternatively, voice-based tools provide direct instruction on CT concepts but can present memory and navigation challenges to users. In this work, we present Visual StoryCoder, a multimodal tablet application that combines the strengths of each of these approaches to overcome their respective weaknesses. Visual StoryCoder introduces children ages 5–8 to CT through creative storytelling, offers direct instruction via a pedagogical voice agent, and eases use through a block-like graphical interface. In a between-subjects evaluation comparing Visual StoryCoder to a leading block-based programming app for this age group (N = 24), we show that Visual StoryCoder is more understandable to independent learners, leads to higher-quality code after app familiarization, and encourages personally meaningful projects.

Computational thinking (CT) education reaches only a fraction of young children, in part because CT learning tools often require expensive hardware or fluent literacy. Informed by needfinding interviews, we developed a voice-guided smartphone application leveraging storytelling as a creative activity by which to teach CT concepts to 5- to 8-year-old children. The app includes two storytelling games where users create and listen to stories as well as four CT games where users then modify those stories to learn about sequences, loops, events, and variables. We improved upon the app design through wizard-of-oz testing (N = 28) and iterative design testing (N = 22) before conducting an evaluation study (N = 22). Children were successfully able to navigate the app, effectively learn about the target computing concepts, and, after using the app, children demonstrated above-chance performance on a near transfer CT concept recognition task.