ScratchLog: Live Learning Analytics for Scratch

Abstract

Scratch is a hugely popular block-based programming environment that is often used in educational settings, and has therefore recently also become a focus for research on programming education. Scratch provides dedicated teacher accounts that make it easy and convenient to handle lessons with school classes. However, once learners join a Scratch classroom, it is challenging to keep track of what they are doing: Both teachers and researchers may be interested in learning analytics to help them monitor students or evaluate teaching material. Researchers may also be interested in understanding how programs are created and how learners use Scratch. Neither use case is supported by Scratch itself currently. In this paper, we introduce ScratchLog, a tool that collects data from learners using Scratch. ScratchLog provides custom user management and makes it easy to set up courses and assignments. Starting from a task description and a starter project, learners transparently use Scratch while ScratchLog collects usage data, such as the history of code edits, or statistics about how the Scratch user interface was used. This data can be viewed on the ScratchLog web interface, or exported for further analysis, for example to inspect the functionality of programs using automated tests.