Using Code Comments as a Pedagogical Scaffold in Digitally Supported Introductory Programming: An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study in Vocational Secondary Education

The development of computational thinking in introductory programming remains a major challenge, particularly in vocational secondary education, where students frequently encounter difficulties in understanding code structure, identifying errors, and translating problem statements into algorithmic solutions. This study examines the use of code comments as a pedagogical scaffold within a digitally supported learning environment enriched with multimodal instructional resources for novice programming students. An exploratory mixed-methods classroom intervention was conducted in a vocational secondary education context, combining comment-centered coding activities with digital educational resources such as online forms, classroom management tools, guided worksheets, interactive exercises, and feedback-oriented learning tasks. The intervention was examined through a pre- and post-test on computational thinking, a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire on students’ knowledge, practices, and perceptions regarding code comments, and supporting qualitative evidence from classroom artifacts. The findings showed a marked improvement in computational thinking performance over the course of the intervention, with the mean test score increasing from 43% to 91%. Students also reported more positive and more elaborated views regarding the role of code comments in code comprehension, debugging, organization, and learning support. Given the single-group design and small sample, these results should be interpreted as exploratory and context-specific rather than as evidence of intervention-only causality. Nevertheless, the study provides practice-based evidence that code comments, when embedded in a structured multimedia-supported learning design, may function as a useful pedagogical scaffold in introductory programming education. This study contributes empirical evidence from an underrepresented vocational secondary education setting and offers actionable implications for multimedia-based digital learning in computer science education.