<p> Writing is a well-established content area in the elementary grade levels and computer programming is currently being introduced to the elementary grade levels. Both subject areas utilize similar organizational skills and teaching strategies. However, the students who are motivated to program may not represent the students who are motivated to write. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in the dimensions of motivation, which are: challenge, choice, enjoyment, and interest of fifth-grade students to engage in an expository writing activity after being taught to develop computer programs with the same teaching strategies used in the writing activity. </p><p> A quasi-experimental control-group design was conducted, with the use of the <i>My Class Activities Instrument,</i> to investigate the change in the dimensions of motivation. Control, treatment groups, and gender were investigated by comparing pretest and iv posttest data. The data were analyzed using a multivariate general linear model (MGLM) for treatment/control groups and gender. </p><p> The results of the MGLM showed no statistical significance for difference in the control, treatment groups, and gender; more analysis was conducted on individual students. Students were categorized into three levels (low, middle, and high) on motivation by the results of their pretest scores. Students were tracked based on who showed a motivational change from the pretest on both the science activity and the posttest. The individual students in the treatment and control groups were then compared by percentage of individual movement. The results of the analysis showed that the low treatment group, on all four dimensions of motivation, moved more positively than the control group that scored in the low group on the pretest. </p><p> The results of this study suggest that the teaching of computer programming was not effective with the intention of motivating the masses of fifth-grade students to write. However, there appears to be supporting evidence that teaching computer programming to fifth-grade students may help some individual students who are not initially motivated to write.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3683560 |
| Date | 28 February 2015 |
| Creators | Boyles, Raymond Edward |
| Publisher | Utah State University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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