Research

Scratch team members from the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten Group and at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education are researching how people use and learn from Scratch.

By sharing projects and participating in the Scratch online community, you are helping us better understand how people can use and learn with Scratch. Any publicly shared projects, comments, or other material on the Scratch site may be included in the research analysis, presentations, papers, and reports. No personally identifiable information is shared. (If you have any questions, please use the Contact Us form.)

The following are research papers and presentations that share our findings about Scratch and the Scratch online community.

Academic publications & presentations

• Brennan, K., and Resnick, M. (2012). New Frameworks for Studying and Assessing the Development of Computational Thinking. Proceedings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual conference.
• Resnick, M. (2012). Mother's Day, Warrior Cats, and Digital Fluency: Stories from the Scratch Online Community. Proceedings of the Constructionism 2012 conference. Athens, Greece.
• Monroy-Hernández, A., Hill, B.M., Gonzalez-Rivero, J., boyd, d. (2011). Computers can't give credit: How automatic attribution falls short in an online remixing community. ACM Conference on Human Factors on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI '11),
• Brennan, K., Resnick, M., and Monroy-Hernandez, A. (2010). Making projects, making friends: Online community as a catalyst for interactive media creation. New Directions for Youth Development, 2010 (128), 75-83.
• Maloney, J., Resnick, M., Rusk, N., Silverman, B., Eastmond, E. (2010). The Scratch Programming Language and Environment. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, November 2010.
• Monroy-Hernández, A., and Hill, B. M. (2010) Cooperation and attribution in an online community of young creators. Poster in ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '10)
• Hill, B.M, Monroy-Hernández, A., Olson, K.R. (2010) Responses to remixing on a social media sharing website. In AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM '10)
• Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernández, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., Millner, A., Rosenbaum, E., Silver, J., Silverman, B., Kafai, Y. (2009). Scratch: Programming for All. Communications of the ACM, November 2009.
• Brennan, K. (2009). Scratch-Ed: An online community for Scratch educators. CSCL'09 conference proceedings.
• Brennan, K., Monroy-Hernández, A., & Resnick, M. (2009). 
  Scratch: Creating and sharing interactive media.  In Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - Volume 2 (CSCL'09)
• Aragon, C. R., Poon, S. S., Monroy-Hernández, A., Aragon, D. A tale of two online communities: fostering collaboration and creativity in scientists and children. In Proceeding of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition (C&C '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9-18.
• Monroy-Hernández, A. (2009) Designing a website for creative learning. In: Proceedings of the Web Science 09: Society On-Line, 18-20 March 2009, Athens, Greece.
• Kafai, Y., Desai, S., Peppler, K., Chiu, G. & Moya, J. (2008). Mentoring Partnerships in a Community Technology Center: A Constructionist Approach for Fostering Equitable Service Learning. Mentoring and Mentorship. [For a copy, please contact Professor Kafai]
• Monroy-Hernández, A. and Resnick, M. (2008). Empowering kids to create and share programmable media.  interactions 15, 2 (March 2008), 50-53. 
  
• Maloney, J., Peppler, K., Kafai, Y., Resnick, M., and Rusk, N. (2008). Programming by Choice: Urban Youth Learning Programming with Scratch.
• Monroy-Hernández, A. (2007) ScratchR: sharing user-generated programmable media. In Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Interaction design and children (IDC '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 167-168.
• Kafai, Y.B., Peppler, K.A., & Chiu, G. (2007). High Tech Programmers in Low Income Communities: Creating a Computer Culture in a Community Technology Center. In C. Steinfeld, B. Pentland, M. Ackermann, & N. Contractor (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Communities and Technology (pp. 545-562). New York: Springer.
• Peppler, K. A. & Kafai, Y. B. (2007). What video game making can teach us about learning and literacy: Alternative pathways into participatory cultures. Paper to be presented at the Digital International Games Research Association meeting in Tokyo, Japan.
• Peppler, K. & Kafai, Y. B. (2007). From SuperGoo to Scratch: Exploring Media Creative Production in an Informal Learning Environment. Journal on Learning, Media, and Technology, 32(2), 149-166. [For a copy, please contact Professor Kafai]
• Peppler, K. & Kafai, Y. B. (2007). Collaboration, Computation, and Creativity: Media Arts Practices in Urban Youth Culture. In C. Hmelo- Silver & A. O'Donnell (Eds.), Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, New Brunswick, NJ.
• Resnick, M. (2007). All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, Washington, D.C.
• Resnick, M. (2007). Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society. Learning and Leading with Technology.
• Resnick, M., Maloney, J., & Rusk, N. (2006). Scratch and technological fluency (Powerpoint slide 2.5MB).
• Peppler, K., & Kafai, Y. (2005). Creative coding: The role of art and programming in the K-12 educational context.
• Resnick, M., and Silverman, B. (2005). Some Reflections on Designing Construction Kits for Kids. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children conference, Boulder, CO.
• Maloney, J., Burd, L., Kafai, Y., Rusk, N., Silverman, B., and Resnick, M. (2004). Scratch: A Sneak Preview. Second International Conference on Creating, Connecting, and Collaborating through Computing. Kyoto, Japan, pp. 104-109.
• Resnick, M., Kafai, Y., Maeda, J. (2003). A Networked, Media-Rich Programming Environment to Enhance Technological Fluency at After-School Centers in Economically-Disadvantaged Communities. Proposal to National Science Foundation.