Broadening participation in computer science has been widely studied, creating many different techniques to attract, motivate, and engage students. A common meta-strategy is to use an outside domain as a hook, using the concepts in that domain to teach computer science. These domains are selected to interest the student, but students often lack a strong background in these domains. Therefore, a strategy designed to increase students' interest, motivation, and engagement could actually create more barriers for students, who now are faced with learning two new topics. To reduce this potential barrier in the domain of music, this paper presents the use of automated, immediate feedback during programming activities at a summer camp that uses music to teach foundational programming concepts. The feedback guides students musically, correcting notes that are out-of-key or rhythmic phrases that are too long or short, allowing students to focus their learning on the computer science concepts. This paper compares the correctness of students that received automated feedback with students that did not, which shows the effectiveness of the feedback. Follow up focus groups with students confirmed this quantitative data, with students claiming that the feedback was not only useful but that the activities would be much more challenging without the feedback.

The demand for qualified computing professionals is high, with thousands of positions remaining unfilled each year. To create more qualified professionals, initiatives to attract and engage students in computer science have been proposed, but they tend to concentrate on primary, secondary (K-12), and post-secondary (college) level. With many adults looking for better career opportunities, it is surprising that few computer science initiatives focus on attracting adult learners to the field. This paper presents the results of an informal computer programming course that teaches the foundational concepts of computer programming to adults as they program hip-hop beats. This course is designed to attract adult learners that otherwise might have never considered computer programming, building their confidence and skills. We conducted this course online, two nights a week, for five weeks, for about 40 participants. Afterward, we conducted a qualitative analysis of written survey data. We found that the adult learners' perception of computer programming changed during the course, with many participants planning their next step in computing education.

Researchers and practitioners have demonstrated various benefits of introducing computational thinking (CT) through music composition coding. While researchers have studied the impacts on participant attitudes towards CT and their learning of CT concepts, more case studies are needed on both learning CT concepts as well as CT practices, i.e., the processes of constructing music coding projects. This paper presents a case study of middle schoolers in an informal learning environment focused on integrating music composition with coding in TunePad. Specifically, we collected and analyzed logs of coding events, final code products, and surveys to explore both CT concept use and CT practices exhibited by the participants as they completed open-ended music coding activities to create their own melodies with specific music and CT requirements and recommendations.

With children spending more time online, personal data are stored on their devices making them susceptible to online risks. Exposing students to cybersecurity education at an early age is critical for raising awareness and knowledge. Yet access to cybersecurity education curricular materials that are engaging for young students is limited. In this work, we present interactive cybersecurity stories for students in grades 3-5 delivered through a commercial social robot. Through focus groups and interviews we subsequently investigated teachers’ views on using a social robot for cybersecurity education, interest in incorporating social robots in the classroom, and perceptions of the ways in which social robots can impact teaching practice and student learning. Findings indicated that teachers found the social robot engaging and expressed interest in using it in their classroom despite some concerns. Findings have implications for the design and implementation of cybersecurity curricula delivered through emerging technologies.

With the shortage of cybersecurity professionals, there is a critical need to train more young-generation cybersecurity professionals to fill the gap. In this work, we designed interactive activities that make abstract cybersecurity concepts more tangible by using exciting new mixed reality (MR) technology to teach cybersecurity skills and raise the potential interest in cybersecurity careers for middle school students. We plan to analyze the immersive experience, situational interest, and workload after the experiment to study the participants' learning performance and user experience.

To meet the demands of 21st century societies, it is essential that faculty across disciplines engage students with course activities and assignments that foster the development of computational thinking (CT). In this study, we address two pertinent questions: (1) What types of artifacts do students develop across different disciplines in response to CT-driven problem prompts' and (2) What types of CT skills do these artifacts demonstrate? To answer the questions, we examined 273 artifacts developed by undergraduate students across seven course assignments from four disciplines: mathematics, sociology, music, and English using a rubric developed to evaluate the following CT skills: abstraction, decomposition, data analysis, and algorithmic thinking. We found that a range of skills were reflected across student artifacts.

In this work, we describe our effort to develop, pilot, and evaluate a model for infusing computational thinking into undergraduate curricula across a variety of disciplines using multiple methods that previously have been individually tried and tested, including: (1) multiple pathways of computational thinking, (2) faculty professional development, (3) undergraduate peer mentors, and (4) formative assessment. We present pilot instantiations of computational thinking integration in three different disciplines including sociology, mathematics and music. We also present our professional development approach, which is based on faculty support rather than a co-teaching model. Further, we discuss formative assessment during the pilot implementation, including data focusing on undergraduate students' understanding and dispositions towards computational thinking. Finally, we reflect on what worked, what did not work and why, and identify lessons learned. Our work is relevant to higher education institutions across the nation interested in preparing students who can utilize computational principles to address discipline-specific problems.

This workshop's goal is to help faculty who want to establish a course (or alternate vehicle) for mentoring undergraduates with some CS background to participate in K-12 teaching CS in local schools with engaging pedagogy. The workshop leverages the experiences and lessons learned from ten semesters of the organizers leading a course that meets once a week on campus for mentoring to support the undergraduates' field experience in local schools and libraries. The workshop will dive deep into logistics including how to establish and maintain strong teacher partnerships, establishing student-teacher matches and weekly field experience schedules, weekly in-class activities and assignments to support the field experience, weekly student reflective journal prompts, and surveys for formative evaluation. Participants will actively reflect on their own contexts with potential opportunities and challenges, and organizers will facilitate small group discussions of how to address the challenges, different models for different contexts, and how to get started. Participants should leave with a plan for next steps toward offering a mentored undergraduate field experience in teaching computer science and access to a community of faculty who are working to help to broaden participation in computer science in K-12 while providing opportunities for undergraduates to hone their communication and leadership skills, increase their self confidence, and participate in giving back to the community using their technical skills. The activities do not require a laptop, only pens and handouts provided by the organizers.

The CS for All initiative places increased emphasis on the need to prepare K-12 teachers of computer science (CS). Professional development (PD) programs continue to be an essential mechanism for preparing in-service teachers who have little formal background in CS content, skills, and teaching pedagogy. While increased investment by federal agencies and the industry has raised the number of CS PD opportunities for K-12 teachers, there has been limited study of how teachers apply what they learn back in their classroom. This paper describes an in-depth qualitative study through interviews of 28 elementary, middle and high school teachers who participated in summer PD in preparation of teaching a full CS course or integrate CS modules into existing courses (e.g., science, engineering, business, technology, etc). The interview protocol focused on educators' involvement in the PD, specific skills and strategies they learned, whether and how they have been able to apply these new skills in the classroom, what facilitated or impeded this application, and how students have responded.

One of the greatest challenges in broadening participation in computer science is teacher preparation, as few middle and high school teachers have a formal background in computing. Further, without a credentialing program, there are limited ways to learn content and pedagogical strategies for effective computer science instruction. As a result, professional development is key to successful reform in the teaching of computer science. In this paper, we describe our three-pronged approach to the design of a professional development model for middle and high school teachers interested in implementing the Computer Science Principles (CSP) curriculum in their classrooms or infusing CSP modules into STEM curricula. We describe our model focusing on content, pedagogical strategies and follow-up classroom support during the academic year. We subsequently report on participating teacher outcomes, in terms of self-rated understandings, attitudes and implementation practices. We share lessons learned and offer recommendations for professional development designers.

A major challenge for broadening participation in computing within K-12 settings is the lack of trained teachers. While professional development programs provide opportunities for the development of knowledge, skills, and pedagogy in teaching computing, teachers need ongoing support throughout the academic year. In this paper, we describe a course-based model for partnering undergraduates with teachers and students in a field experience model. We describe the model focusing on learning objectives, curriculum, field component and partnership building. We subsequently report on the products that undergraduates were able to create with their partner teachers. Finally, we investigate the impact of the field experience model on undergraduates' content knowledge, pedagogical skills and career development.