Empowering Visual Programming and Motor Board Instruction in STEAM Education: Integrating Computational Thinking and Scaffolding Learning for Improving Learning Performance and Engagement of Students

STEAM education can transform students’ roles in traditional classrooms from passive to active through hands-on practice, but many students are prone to encounter difficulties in the interdisciplinary learning process, which affects the effectiveness of hands-on practice. In order to overcome the dilemma of STEAM education, scaffolded learning and computational thinking are considered effective instructional strategies. However, there are few studies exploring the educational implementation of integrating computational thinking with scaffolded learning in STEAM education. Therefore, this study uses a quasi-experimental design to conduct experimental activities in STEAM education and introduces the MakeCode platform and micro: bit motor board to explore the issues of this empirical study. According to the results, the experimental group was able to correctly use the MakeCode platform to code programs for practicing micro: bit motor board tasks. Not only did their learning performance significantly surpass that of the control group, but they also maintained higher engagement in terms of learning. Therefore, this study verifies that integrating computational thinking and scaffolding learning in STEAM education can significantly improve students’ learning performance and engagement, thereby providing important educational implementation for the introduction of computational thinking and scaffolding learning in STEAM education.