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Students of all socioeconomic backgrounds love music and express their identity through music. There are strong historical connections between music and computing, and computer-based music has a heavy presence in contemporary popular culture. Thus, programming electronic music can provide the type of authentic learning experience that fosters participation in computer science (CS) by minoritized students. Although important efforts have been made in that direction, they have not reached young children in mainstream public classrooms, particularly in schools serving children from low-income and marginalized backgrounds. Developing a computational tool and educational program that reaches this key demographic holds the potential to greatly increase CS knowledge and participation in the future workforce. For this, our team has created M-flow, a flow-based music programming platform that seeks to be engaging for children from the outset, and that makes it extremely easy for non-specialized teachers to learn and implement CS activities in the classroom.
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This content will become publicly available on February 12, 2026
Engaging K-12 Students with Flow-Based Music Programming: An Experience Report on Its Impact on Teaching and Learning
Abstract Music and computer science (CS) have profound historical and structural connections, with programming music offering a promising avenue for engaging children in CS through creative expression. To foster this engagement, our team developed M-Flow, a flow-based music programming platform designed to introduce students to CS via music. Despite extensive existing research in music and CS education, experience reports and empirical studies on K-12 teachers' implementation and its impact on young kids' learning are limited. Therefore, we recruit elementary school teachers and students with no or limited prior programming experience, introducing them to M-Flow and its curriculum through a professional development workshop, a semester's job embedded support, and classroom implementation. We describe the experiences of teachers as they attempt to integrate music and CS, the challenges they face, and the influence on students' attitudes toward learning computing concepts. Specifically, we reflect on our intervention by conducting a sequential mixed-method evaluation. During the qualitative phase, we collected multiple sources of data from three teachers through focus groups and debriefings after a semester of classroom implementation. Thematic analysis of workshop activities, interviews, and debrief videos revealed three themes with seven sub-themes on teachers' integration of flow-based music programming and two themes with five sub-themes on challenges faced by the teachers. In the quantitative phase, we gathered data on attitudes and self-efficacy from 75 students taught by these teachers. Results indicate that the flow-based music programming environment provided an engaging programming experience for students and significantly increased their self-efficacy towards learning programming.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2241714
- PAR ID:
- 10591507
- Editor(s):
- NA
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Edition / Version:
- NA
- Volume:
- NA
- Issue:
- NA
- ISSN:
- NA
- ISBN:
- 9798400705311
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 708 to 714
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Flow-Based-Programming Music
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: NA Other: NA
- Size(s):
- NA
- Location:
- Pittsburgh PA USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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