NSF Awards: 1649224
This project address the challenge of broadening participation in STEM among underrepresented minoritized youth in grades 5-8. Our primary focus is to provide underrepresented youth with opportunities to acquire computer science (CS) knowledge, while simultaneously strengthening mathematical skills fundamental to CS. We will be adapting high quality NSF-supported lessons available in the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum, and utilizing culturally-responsive pedagogical frameworks found to promote competence and belonging in CS. The work will be situated in informal learning environments serving diverse populations: public libraries and Boys & Girls Clubs. Through partnerships with local community organizations, industry and representatives from formal and informal settings, our shared vision is to establish a scalable model for providing minoritized youth with recurrent opportunities to create computational artifacts culturally responsive to their community contexts, while simultaneously strengthening their mathematical skills.
Neil Plotnick
Teacher
What type of activities are taking place in the informal learning spaces? How many children that are getting exposure to the CS materials at the library or in the Girls and Boys Club opting to take formal CS classes at school? How do you track the students progress? Finally, does the library staff or volunteers have any active role in the work the students are doing in the computer lab? Very interested to hear more!
Lori Pollock
Professor
This project is an NSF INCLUDES launch pilot. We are spending the first year, organizing for this coming fall 2017 implementation in these two informal spaces. We will be co-leading after school programs in each space focusing on computational thinking activities, mainly starting with web development and coding in block-based languages. Undergrad students will partner with informal learning staff and hopefully high school students who have completed cs courses in school to lead the activities. We will not have data on follow up on students til after we run this for at least a year.
Nicole Reitz-Larsen
Educator
Hello Lori - this project sounds very interesting. I believe that reaching out to students at younger ages about computer science is important and helping them experience computational practices in a variety of settings is beneficial to expand their perspective of what computer science is and who does it.
How are you adapting a year long curriculum into activities that are meaningful to students so the activities preserve the equity, inquiry and connections to cs concepts with this model?
I'm also interested to hear how the program is set up with students who might be coming some days and not others or how you manage the learning progression for students to feel successful with computer science concepts and applying them to a variety of situations.
Chrystalla Mouza
Professor
Hi Nicole, thank you for your interest in our work. Based on other work we do in the field, we came to realize that we always need to have a "beginners" lesson at hand. We do a lot of differentiation with kids where we give them options to push them forward (e.g., encouraging them to apply additional elements to their projects) or revisit ideas they may have missed.
Lori Pollock
Professor
We have an educational researcher, computer science education expert, and community culture expert working together along with student testing of materials as we go, to take units and make them community-focused project themes and adapted to informal project-based learning after school.
We have to ensure that activities have several options to them so those students who have been there before can continue to another option while others will start with earlier options. It is very project-based learning.
Chrystalla Mouza
Professor
Building on what Lori said, we are also consulting with the community experts and hope to add teachers to our team this summer as we adapt the curriculum to informal settings. We plan to pilot sample lessons this summer with children in those settings (who are there for summer camps) and receive feedback before we continue with further adaptations.
Nicole Reitz-Larsen
Educator
Thanks for the further insight. I'm interested to hear how it goes and see what adaptions you make to the curriculum to adapt it for informal PBL after school situations.
Lien Diaz
Sr. Director
I really like the idea of working with middle school students to provide exposure and guidance with computer science. This is largely based on the curriculum and resources that I know are available and also because this is a critical time in their education where they will begin solidifying their notions of disciplines and studies. Exploring Computer Science is certainly an excellent curriculum and I very much think the equity and engagement approach is really good. Does the project have feedback from students about the curriculum and how it helped to increase interest in STEM or CS? I think this would really be great to share with the community for others to learn from. Great project!
Chrystalla Mouza
Professor
Hi Lien, we will begin implementation this summer/Fall but based on prior NSF supported work, we know that exposure to CS in those middle school years does influence student attitudes towards CS and STEM broadly. To find out about our work in formal settings you can also check out our NSF Partner4CS project (http://sites.udel.edu/partner4cs/). Thanks for stopping by.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.