Online computer science courses, such as those run by virtual public high schools, can help reach students in schools where funding constraints limit student opportunity. Many schools cannot afford computer science teachers, but with virtual course offerings, students can receive the same learning opportunities regardless of physical location or funding limitations. Due to the increasing demand for online programs, there is a similar demand for high-quality online professional development opportunities. While a substantial body of research focuses on online computer science educators identifying current needs in CS education, additional research is still needed to provide strategies that strengthen the effectiveness of online computer science courses.

This work-in-progress paper examines the engineering design process to emphasize open-ended problem solving that encourages students to design, test, and learn from their trials. This process nurtures students' abilities to create innovative solutions to challenges in any subject. Integration of engineering design into secondary experiences is a supportive context for STEM learning. Such experiences introduce students to the nature of engineering and provide opportunities to experience how engineers respond to emerging challenges. These experiences are important in promoting an understanding of engineering and cultivating interest in the profession. The engineering design process engages students in identifying a problem, developing possible solutions, making a prototype, testing and evaluating, modifying and retesting, and communicating results. The last stage in this process extends the common five stage approach, recognizing the critical nature of scientific communication in sharing results. It is essential for students to become familiar with the process as they develop their design thinking, and model the processes used by engineers. This study explores students' use of the engineering design process by analyzing students’ written engineering design reports that were composed and submitted for a STEM competition at the secondary school level. Researchers used the six phases of the design process as a lens to explore students’ demonstration of each component. Preliminary results of the thematic analysis show that students identify design challenges to address, usually in the form of "I will engineer a XXX that will address YYY" where the problem and engineering solution are specified. Though students provide critical information on their design steps, steps are often not detailed enough to convey the actual process taken in design and testing. Students engage in a iterative process of testing, addressing issues, retesting, but often do not describe the retesting process or final changes. Data is often summarized in narrative form with limited attempts to incorporate tables, graphs, and illustrations to communicate design features and data from trials. Students summarize their findings but often fail to use language that conveys how the outcomes address the stated problem or challenge. This paper describes salient findings for each of the six engineering design phases.

Creating effective professional development is critical to support high school teachers who teach computer science (CS) online. The context of this study is based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the United States and North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). Ten high school teachers from the NCVPS who teach CS online participated in a summer workshop and recommended design, facilitation, and evaluation strategies to be included in effective professional development (PD). The summer workshop was conducted synchronously via Zoom. It provided the opportunity to discuss teacher perceptions related to the research questions "What design, facilitation, and assessment strategies are helpful to include in an AP Computer Science Advanced course?" and "What recommendations do you have for designing an online professional development course for high school teachers to teach computer science online?" The questions were posed through an online collaborative Jamboard, and the affinity diagram method was used for data collection and document analysis was conducted. The teacher posts were qualitatively analyzed to identify common themes. Findings for professional development on content design included CS content, how to teach CS, and CS tools and activities. For assessment, they recommended content knowledge assessments, including lab assignments, single and pair programming, and coding assessments. They recommended tools for supplemental instruction, integration of discussion boards for interaction, and tools and strategies to provide feedback for professional development.

We have established a research-practice partnership (RPP) to build a computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT)-focused STEM ecosystem at two middle schools. Creating such an ecosystem to broaden student participation in computing through an RPP approach involves all stakeholders in the research process. Borrowing upon visual participatory research methods, we developed a graphic research instrument to engage teachers in the research process and elicit their perspectives on strategies for building the ecosystem. This experience report describes our research methodology across two distinct cases to demonstrate the utility of this drawing activity as an investigative and partnership development tool. The contribution is in offering a flexible approach to other university-based RPP teams that enables a synergistic partnership development tool and data collection instrument that can be tailored to a variety of RPP contexts, facilitating more productive and equitable ways of engaging stakeholders in the research process. We describe our project contexts and share results from the pilot study with practitioner-members of our RPP teams. We discuss two cases to highlight the contribution this approach made to the development of our partnerships.

This project is a Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between two middle schools and two universities. It focuses on investigating problems and on identifying solutions around increasing participation and interest in computer science (CS). We aim to do this by identifying, experimenting with, and fine-tuning methods to help students develop computational thinking (CT) skills. The research employs a STEM ecosystem model, which facilitates a support structure that aims to mitigate barriers and impact students as they progress in STEM areas. While this RPP is still a work in progress, we present data from the first year of our collaboration with one of the middle schools. While the research questions guiding this RPP are intended to be iterative and revised annually, year one data provides perspectives on (1) barriers to developing a STEM ecosystem that supports CS/CT for every student through integration into science, math, and language arts courses, (2) the factors or interventions needed for the development of a CS/CT focused ecosystem that supports everyone in the school, (3) the indicators of success for a CS/CT focused STEM ecosystem in a school, and (4) how the ecosystem prepares and engages all students for CS/CT work in high school. Year one data is discussed in terms of the STEM ecosystem framework and in how it will guide the next steps in this partnership. This project contributes to the understanding of how to prepare future generations for participation in a workforce where knowledge of the foundations of CS/CT is integral to success.