Interview themes and codes.

Instruction in coding for children has emerged as a significant means of fostering computational thinking, with gamification serving a crucial reinforcing function in this educational process. This experimental study integrates four principal gamification elements—role-playing, rewards, challenges, and cooperation—into unplugged children’s coding education tools to examine their impacts on children’s flow experience and learning engagement. Under the theoretical framework of Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R), researchers developed an unplugged coding education prototype named “Coding Adventure,” employing an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach with 295 Chinese elementary students (aged 8–10 years). Subsequent qualitative interviews were conducted with 12 stratified participants. Empirical findings demonstrate that role-playing and cooperation effectively enhance children’s flow experience when engaging in coding education tools. Children role-play heroes and engage in “real fights,” engage in teamwork and communicate with others, which can bring them into a flow experience. The flow experience effectively enhances children’s learning engagement. The main reasons are the immersion, upgrade experience, practicality, goal-orientedness, teamwork and partner’s suggestions brought by gamification elements. Moreover, rewards and cooperation also directly positively influence children’s learning engagement. Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, engagement in teamwork and receiving encouragement and suggestions from interactions with classmates are thought to increase children’s motivation to learn. This study examined the effects of diverse gamification elements on children’s flow experience and learning engagement in an unplugged gamified coding education tool under the framework of the S-O-R theory. Additionally, this study demonstrated important practical implications by providing developers of coding education tools with a clear path to enhancing participants’ sense of immersion and achievement.