The Impact of Educational Videos, Digital Games, and Activities on Young Children’s Computational Thinking Skills

Computational thinking (CT) skills in early childhood provide children with tools to express their thinking and develop strategies for solving problems in their everyday lives. CT skills are also associated with future computer science, math, and literacy achievement. Although research has shown that interventions can support CT development, more work is needed to develop and evaluate informal learning interventions that support early childhood CT at scale. We report findings from a 6-week randomized controlled trial examining the effects of Lyla in the Loop (Lyla), a CT-focused multimedia property, on four CT skills—abstraction, sequencing and algorithms, problem-solving, and control structures—and task persistence. Participants were 133 five- and six-year-old children and their parents from across the United States. Researchers randomly assigned families either to receive access to Lyla videos, games, and activities through a study website or to use educational media of their choosing. At post-test, children assigned to access Lyla resources scored significantly higher on a measure of their ability to use control structures to solve problems, controlling for pre-test assessments and demographics. We found no other statistically significant group differences in CT or task-persistence outcomes. These findings demonstrate the potential for high-quality media to support specific CT skills in informal learning settings.