Blogs (4) >>

Racial and gender representation among computer science (CS) students continues to lag behind national demographics in the U.S. One way to improve students’ interests in CS is to connect CS to other fields to expand students’ perceptions of what constitutes CS. While CS+X programs, which combine CS and another field into a single interdisciplinary degree, are expanding at the undergraduate level, there is room to further expand related opportunities in K-12 spaces to encourage more students to pursue CS. To this end, in this experience report we present a new CS+X topics course for high school students that teaches about the intersections of CS with several non-STEM “+X” fields. The course was designed by a team of educators with experience in K-12 curriculum design and broadening participation programs. We piloted the course at a high school in Spring 2023 with 11 students. We present our course design and breakdown of decisions made during the course design process. Further, we provide results from our evaluation survey, featuring thematic analysis of students’ commentary and a breakdown of course topics and components students favored. Our students reported that their interests in computing and understanding of computing’s broad impacts on society improved. We provide a reflection on the course’s future refinements and our plans for further testing of the course in more high school environments to prepare it for wider community adoption.

Sat 23 Mar

Displayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change

13:45 - 15:00
High-School Camps, Courses, and CommunityPapers at Meeting Room D135
Chair(s): Lauren Bricker University of Washington
13:45
25m
Talk
A High School Camp on Algorithms and Coding in a Small Island Developing StateK12GlobalMSI
Papers
Daniel Fokum The University of the West Indies, Zaria Chen Shui The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kerene Wright The University of the West Indies, Mona, Orr Paradise University of California, Berkeley, Gunjan Mansingh The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Daniel Coore University of the West Indies
DOI
14:10
25m
Talk
Bringing Social Computing to Secondary School ClassroomsK12
Papers
Kianna Bolante University of Washington, Kevin Chen Cleveland STEM High School, Quan Ze Chen University of Washington, Amy Zhang University of Washington, Seattle
DOI
14:35
25m
Talk
Designing and Piloting a High School CS+X Topics CourseK12
Papers
Kathleen Isenegger University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Max Fowler University of Illinois, Yael Gertner University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Raya Hegeman-Davis University of Wyoming, Leonard Pitt University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
DOI