Students’ Learn to Code Activity Spikes
During COVID-19 School Closures
Insights from Tynker
July 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread educational disruption, with ​school closures in
186 countries affecting 1.2 billion students​. Almost overnight, remote learning emerged as the new
educational norm, making a blend of digital and in-person learning solutions a necessity foreducators and parents alike. Teachers, schools and parents needed solutions to ​ensure thatstudents’ time a​way from the classroom didn’t mean time away from learning.
Offering the ​Tynker​ solution for free during this period was not only an
opportunity to help during an unprecedented global catastrophe, but also agreat chance to provide students all over the globe the ability to learn tocode. In addition, it gave Tynker the chance to better understand the needsof our users, so we could further enhance our world-class platform.
The results of this initiative, based on data Tynker collected, illustrate how awell-designed online learning platform can effectively meet the needs of educators, parents, and ​—most importantly — the students themselves​. ​Tynker’s coding curriculum experienced
unprecedented demand from around the globe. ​In just a 10 week period from March to May 2020:●

32,000 ​new teachers at ​9,000+​ schools in 122 countries and in all 50 U.S. states adopted
Tynker’s remote learning curriculum.

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190,000​ new parents registered their children for Tynker courses outside of a school.

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6+ million​ new students were given access to the full Tynker curriculum through theirschools.

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Students spent nearly ​2 million​ hours on Tynker learning to code.

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11+ million ​lessons were completed on Tynker.

Key Findings
1. Coding Courses Provide a Foundation for the Transition to Remote Teaching
In the face of the pandemic, teachers were asked to overhaul nearly every facet of their jobs andpivot quickly to online instruction. It was a daunting task, to say the least.
Classroom-based programs are designed and optimized for in-person teacher
support and students learning from other students. Creating an effective remotelearning environment is not as easy as simply digitizing existing lesson plans: Itrequires a thoughtful approach to curriculum design, student assessment, andprofessional development. In fact, according to experts, it can ​take more than ayear to plan, develop, and implement a single high-quality online course​.
To further assist teachers new to remote education in the wake of school
closures​, Tynker launched ​weekly video products, live webinars, and ​freetraining​. These helped to complement the already robust Tynker platform, which
includes 40 self-paced courses; 3,700 learning modules and interactivelessons; and progress tracking, with teacher and parent dashboards.
Teachers quickly learned how to​ administer their own dashboards,
monitor student progress in real-time, and manage students remotely.
Not surprisingly, ​97%​ of surveyed teachers stated that Tynker met orexceeded their expectations as a hybrid learning platform. Adoption was swift: From March to May
2020, over 9,000 new schools and 32,000 new teachers embraced Tynker’s remote learning
curriculum.
4 of 5​ teachers granted free licenses were actively using the Tynker platform with their students asof May 2020. Based on this experience, ​92% ​of surveyed teachers were likely or very likely torecommend Tynker to other teachers.

9,000+​new schools
impacted byclosures worldwide
have embraced
Tynker’s remotelearning curriculum“I felt tremendous guilt not being able to give my students my normal attention, but I’ve seen how
they are growing accustomed to figuring things out on their own and that was an unexpected
benefit of me not being over their shoulders all the time.”- Robert Velamisa, Emma Lazarus School; Brooklyn, New York2. Learning to Code Reinforces Academic and 21st-Century Skills
Code fuels the technology in our world — from microprocessors in everyday items, likerefrigerators or water heaters, to sophisticated programs that operate our cars and buildings.
Learning to code has become an essential
element of a child’s education. As one teacher
conveyed, “I teach French Immersion. I still
think coding is important for kids to learn.”
Learning to code has been proven to reinforce
academic performance in core courses, suchas math. ​For example, when students programa game in which they need to keep score andhealth, they use variables and arithmetic. Whenthey make shapes with a pen drawing, they use
geometry while working with angles and numbers. When they build the logic of a computer
program, they use expressions and test inequalities​.​ And when they animate and move objects on
their screens, they use coordinate geometry.

Learning to code also helps to reinforce students’ corereading skills: ​For example, the step-by-step order inwhich instructions should occur ​—​ a key computational
thinking competence acquired while learning to code ​—is fundamental to reading comprehension. ​Students
who code come to understand that, unlike
communicating in most spoken languages, if a mistakeis made when writing in a programming language, therecipient of the message — the computer — can’t ask
for clarification or glean meaning based on the broader
context. Coding demands a higher degree of specificity, or accuracy. ​In recognition of its ability tofortify students’ academic skills, many schools are now adding coding to their core curriculum.
But, learning to code doesn’t merely reinforce academics. Children who learn to code develop
essential 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking. ​Some arguethat coding is the literacy of the 21st century. Learning how to code empowers students to think in
new ways, solve problems that they have not previously encountered, and become the truearchitects of their future ​—​ all of which will be mission-critical​ in the post-pandemic era.

3. A Successful Platform Integrates Fun with Learning
Remote learning can be as difficult for students as distance teaching is for educators. School
closures hav​e forced students to shif​t from classrooms designed to support learning, to their
bedrooms and kitchen tables, where distractions abound. As a result, many parents and teachers
have witnessed a lack of motivation among their learners.
Gamified apps and platforms such as Tynker, which was explicitly designed for student
engagement in independent environments, can help increase learner motivation. ​Some students
learn faster online​ than in a traditional classroom setting, and ​retain the lessons learned​ better.
Students can’t get enough of Tynker: ​“Tynker was my favorite activity. Tynker is hard, but fun.”Teachers also report that students regularly request to work on Tynker on their own time:​ ​"Mystudents are enjoying their work with Tynker a lot more than the work they are assigned in their
Google Classrooms."

Over 11 Million Lessons Completed onTynker in Less Than Three Months
From March through May 2020, students
who were newly granted access to Tynker,
either through their school or via a parent
registration, took full advantage of theirlicenses. These students completed over 11
million lessons across Tynker’s diverse
course offerings, from block coding toprogramming in Python, JavaScript, andHTML/CSS.

4. The Best Online Learning Platforms Offer a Broad and Deep Curriculum
Sifting through the flood of online educational resources can be difficult for teachers to navigate
and even more challenging to manage on an ongoing basis. The best online learning platforms
have a broad and deep curriculum that provide consistency and flexibility for both teachers andstudents. In addition, it's essential that the platform engage students, allowing them to learn while
exploring their individual interests and hobbies.
The Tynker platform, developed and curated over eight years, provides a clear learning pathway
for students from PreK through 12th grade. The platform includes 600+ hours of coding curriculum,
leveraging fun activities to teach block coding, Minecraft mods, text coding, and Python
programming. The essential benefit of Tynker is that there are deep courses across a number ofsubjects that interest children, including, but not limited to Minecraft, music creations, gamemaking, text coding, and adventure games.

Market-Leading EdTech Companies Innovate to Exceed Expectations
The abrupt shift to remote learning has proved challenging, as any sudden, global educationaltransition in the face of a crisis would be. There have, however, been some positive outcomes tothe recent, forced remote learning. For many, school schedules have suddenly become more fluid,
allowing students more choice over when and how they do their school work. Overcommitted
students with jam-packed schedules have finally had a chance to slow down. And teachers,
parents, and students worldwide have experienced first-hand the benefits of learning to code via
platforms like Tynker that are deep in content and easy to use.
Clearly, the new age of blended learning is upon us. In the post-pandemic world, classrooms will
become progressively more digitized, remote learning will grow ever more essential, and data will
increasingly be used to enable personalized learning experiences. Market-leading edtech
companies like Tynker will continue to innovate to provide engaging, interest based, in-depth
remote learning solutions that meet the evolving needs of students, parents, schools, andeducators.

About Tynker
Tynker empowers kids of all ages to become Makers by enabling them to develop coding skills todesign, develop, and power animations, games, toys, smart devices, and more. The company’saward-winning platform helps to engage students at home, at school, and on the go, so they
develop the critical thinking, reasoning, and programming skills that turn them into the Makers oftoday and tomorrow. Tynker’s highly successful STEM teaching platform has been used by one inthree U.S. K-8 schools, 90,000 schools globally, and over 60 million students across 150 countries.
Tynker’s partners include some of the world’s most respected brands including Apple, Google,Microsoft, Mattel, PBS, Lego, NASA, BBC Learning, and more. Tynker is accessible from anycomputer with an Internet browser, as well as via the Tynker and Tynker Junior mobile apps, andoffers both a free and paid subscription option. For more information, visit ​http://www.tynker.com​.

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