Educating the STEM leaders of Tomorrow
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Attracting K-12 Students to Computing Careers
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Educating the STEM leaders of Tomorrow
- 1. EDUCATING THE STEM LEADERS OF TOMORROW Attracting K-12 Students to Computing Careers GOCICT 2015 Shubbhi Taneja, Yasmeen Rawajfih, Derek Gore, and Daniela Marghitu Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Auburn University ` Auburn, AL 36849-5347 Email: {szt0024, yzr0003, dag0018, marghda}@auburn.edu GOCICT 2015
- 2. MOTIVATION • To encourage K-12 students to pursue computing careers, especially engineering • Growth rate in STEM jobs are three times more than its non-STEM counterparts • 75% of the engineering jobs in the U.S. through 2018 will be in computing • Less involvement of women in the field of Computer Science and IT• • 20% employment growth projection for web developers by the year 2022 GOCICT 2015
- 3. OBJECTIVE To increase the participation of children and female population in the field of computers and technology To foster the interest of our students to learn and develop technologies beginning at the classroom level To impart some of the most desirable skills required by all occupations To encourage K-12 students to pursue computing careers, especially engineering, with special focus on girls, students with disabilities, and students from underprivileged areas GOCICT 2015
- 4. GOCICT 2015 APPROACH Introduced CS4ALL camps for middle school children at Auburn University Offered scholarships to girls for participating in our all girls camp, CS4ALLG Introduced Personal Computer Applications and Web Development courses in Computer Science at Auburn University Provided online version of the courses to facilitate distance learning NAO robot used in CS4ALLG Camp 2015
- 5. GOCICT 2015 PERSONAL COMPUTER APPLICATIONS COURSE -1 Microsoft Windows OS, Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Microsoft SharePoint are taught. Offered primarily to non-engineering students, with a curriculum designed to suit the needs of business school as well. The textbook is published by Prentice Hall; customized for Auburn University. Pearson Education offers web-based testing solutions through their product called MyITLab. All of the exams are administered through MyITLab's skill-based assessments.
- 6. GOCICT 2015 PERSONAL COMPUTER APPLICATIONS COURSE -2 Student enrollment on-campus and off campus from 2010 to 2014 at Auburn University The 2 credit hour course is offered for undergraduate students. A team of qualified graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are appointed to teach this course. The course's website and Canvas are the official sources of class information. For students who are required to take Comp 1000 and believe that they already possess the skills and knowledge taught in the Comp 1000 course, a competency test is available.
- 7. GOCICT 2015 PERSONAL COMPUTER APPLICATIONS COURSE -3 There are two types of assignments: in- class book assignments and weekly homework assignments to be done on MyITLab. MyITLab assignments are very engaging since students use a simulated environment for Microsoft Office. Each student has an Auburn University OneDrive account to save documents that they work on during class. Screenshot of the home page of Canvas toolkit used to manage content for our courses.
- 8. Our text books GOCICT 2015 WEB DEVELOPMENT COURSES These courses are offered for undergraduates, graduates and off-campus students. Concepts of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Java Server Pages (JSP) technologies are covered in our course (COMP 5000) while HTML 5.0, CSS 3.0 and JavaScript, are covered in the other (COMP 2000). Students are also given free access to various web development IDEs required to develop solutions for the project and homework assignments. Course website: http://pca.eng.auburn.edu/index.aspx/CMS/comp5000 http://pca.eng.auburn.edu/index.aspx/CMS/comp2000
- 9. GOCICT 2015 K-12 OUTREACH PROGRAM Designed to create and promote interest in computational reasoning and engineering skills in middle school students (Technologies used: Kodu, App Inventor, and Lego Robotics) Appealed to the creative side of the students while simultaneously incorporating analytical thinking and problem solving skills Students gain hands on experience with critical thinking in order to solve engineering and programming problems. (Link to Robo camp’s website: http://eng.auburn.edu/outreac h/k-12/robo-camp/index.html )
- 10. K-12 OUTREACH PROGRAM Robotics portion of the camp provides an opportunity for students to explore engineering and physics concepts as well. Students learn programming techniques and are introduced to algorithmic thinking practices when learning to program their robots. Students gain hands on experience with critical thinking in order to solve engineering and programming problems. Robo Camp: http://eng.auburn.edu/outreach/k- 12/robo-camp/index.html This robot was developed by students who participated in Summer 2015 camp at Auburn University.
- 11. GOCICT 2015 K-12 camp offered in Summer 2015 for kids from black belt regions in the United States
- 12. GOCICT 2015 STEM JOBS PROJECTION
- 13. WOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND IT - 1 The field of Computer Science and Information Technology (IT) has always been dominated by males. Though the number of women in Computer Science engineering has increased since 1993, the number is considerably low when compared to those of men.
- 14. GOCICT 2015 WOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND IT - 2 CS4ALLG aims to change the women's perception about CS and provide them with an engaging CS programming experience. For these camps, we use a combination of CS Unplugged (CSU) kinesthetic activities and Microsoft Kodu. Through use of the contemporary flipped classroom method, our goal is to boost self-confidence and reinforce the knowledge imparted. Website: http://sharepoint.eng.auburn.edu/sites/CS 4ALL-G/SitePages/Home.aspx
- 16. GOCICT 2015 LAST DAY OF THE CS4ALLG CAMPS IN 2014 AND 2015
- 17. QUESTIONS ? GOCICT 2015 Thank you !
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Good afternoon everyone here in United States and good evening to all our international guests. My name is Shubbhi Taneja and I am working on my doctoral degree at Auburn University in Alabama. Today I will be presenting our approach on educating and attracting K-12 students to fields of STEM esp computer engineering.
- The motivation behind this work is that the growth rate of jobs in the STEM sector is much higher as compared to the non-STEM sectors. By 2018, 75% of the engineering jobs will be in computing. However, there has always been less involvement of women in the field of CS & IT which is one of the driving factors behind this study.
- We plan on achieving the aforementioned goals by setting various objectives such as increasing the participation of women and youth in the field of CS; engaging students to learn and develop technologies through various courses; imparting some of the most desirable skills required in the computer industry today and encouraging children especially girls, to pursue careers in engineering.
- Over the years, we have been successful in implementing CS4ALL camps for middle school children, offering scholarships to girls to encourage their participation in our camps; introducing PCA and Web development courses for undergraduates working on their degree in Comp Sci. In order to reach out to more people, we offer online version of these courses.
- Now, I will start discussing about the courses we offer here at AU. PCA a.k.a. COMP 1000. COMP 1000 is one of the few courses offered every year in all 3 semesters: Fall, Spring, and Summer. Every semester, more than 800 students from non-engineering majors enroll in COMP 1000. In our course, we teach students the uses and features of the latest version of Microsoft's Windows Operating System as well as the core Microsoft Office applications: Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. Students also learn to use Microsoft SharePoint to build and customize websites. Prentice Hall, a leading publishing company for information technology courses, is the provider of the course's custom text book and web-based training for Microsoft Office applications. The custom edition for AU consists of two textbooks: Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint, in addition to an access code for use with the web-based training. Pearson Education offers web-based testing solutions worldwide through their web-based applications and their secure servers.
- PCA is a two credit hour course and the class meets twice a week for an hour at a time. A team of qualified graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are appointed to teach this course. These GTAs are working on their masters or doctoral degrees in Computer Science or Software Engineering. The GTAs instruct the classes and help students work on their hands-on assignments during class. There are two types of assignments that students are required to complete every week: in-class assignments and online homework assignments. For the convenience of our students, we offer the PCA course online. Students taking the online course are given the exact same assignments assigned to on-campus students and take the same exams through our testing services. The number of student who enrol in the online class are always fewer than the students who enrol in the on-campus version of the course (Fig 3.), as only one online section is offered each semester. ( shown in the graph above) For students who are required to take Comp 1000 and believe that they already possess the skills and knowledge taught in the Comp 1000 course, a competency test is available. If the student scores a 70% or above on the competency test s/he will receive a "satisfactory" grade and will be exempted from taking the Comp 1000 course, otherwise s/he will receive an "unsatisfactory" grade and will be required to take the Comp 1000 course.
- The course's website and Canvas are the official sources of class information. The course syllabus, exams, assignment schedules, grades, student resources, and all other course-related information that students need are posted here( screenshot in slide above). The documents that students work on during class are saved to their OneDrive accounts. Each student has an Auburn University OneDrive account to save their work for later access. With this methodology, students learn the advantages of saving their documents to the cloud.
- Moving on to other two courses we offer in the area of web development. These two courses, referred to as COMP 2000 and COMP 5000, are offered for undergraduates, graduates and off-campus students. The primary motivation to offer these two courses at AU is the rising need for web developers in the today's industry. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, there is a 20% employment growth projection for web developers by the year 2022. Another report from AboutTech.com [8] lists the top 10 skills desired in a good web designer. The top 4 skills are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax. These are the driving factors for us to offer our web development courses and prepare students for these exciting job opportunities. Where COMP 2000 provides learners with the latest knowledge, skills, practice and experience in developing Web pages and Web sites using HTML 5.0, CSS 3.0 and JavaScript; the concepts of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Java Server Pages (JSP) technologies are covered in COMP 5000.
- - By using a hands-on approach as a catalyst, the CS4 camp is designed to create and promote interest in computational reasoning and engineering skills in middle school aged children. By allowing the students the creative freedom and supplying them with the resources and knowledge base that they would need to accomplish their tasks, the camp effectively dispels the notion that there is limited creativity[10]. Using Kodu, App Inventor, and Lego Robotics we are introducing engineering concepts in interesting ways that appeal to the creative side of the students while simultaneously incorporating analytical thinking and problem solving skills In our K-12 outreach programs we aim to encourage K-12 students to pursue STEM careers, especially engineering, with special focus on girls, students with disabilities, and students from underprivileged areas who may have more apprehension towards pursuing such degrees. In today's world it is becoming more and more important for us to develop problem solving skills, and become fast, independent learners.
- Although the camp is oriented around showing students concepts for computer science and programming, the robotics portion of the camp also provides an opportunity for students to explore engineering and physics concepts as well. The robotics camp itself follows a lesson plan, starting with assigning the students to groups and introducing them to a basic robot build, complete with construction instructions. Once the various groups have constructed their first robots they are introduced to the coding software used to program the Lego NXT and EV3 robots that they are assigned to work with. By the end of the robotics camp the students have had some hands on experience with critical thinking in order to solve engineering and programming problems while they compete with each other to create the best robot for the particular task that they are accomplishing.
- Recently, we also offered a similar camp for students from black-belt region in the U.S (cs4allb.eng.auburn.edu). The students had very less opportunities with computers before. These students gained hands-on programming experience with Microsoft Kudo and Lego NXT and EV3 robots.
- Let’s take our focus to these two graphs that emphasize on the opportunities in STEM in the coming years. On the left: A report on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce forecasts 51 percent of STEM occupations will be computer occupations by 2018. On the right: For the foreseeable future, nearly 3 out of 4 new science or engineering jobs in the U.S. are going to be in computing! By contrast, just 16% will be traditional engineering jobs, and even fewer will be in the sciences or mathematics. What kind of “computing” jobs are these? The pie-chart on the right breaks the “computing” jobs down in the different career categories, and shows that the US-BLS is predicting: 27% (295,200 jobs) of the new STEM jobs will be in software engineering alone as compared to 16% (178,400 jobs) in the rest of engineering combined!
- In one of the latest reports issued by the National Science Foundation it was found that though the number of women in Computer Science engineering has increased since 1993, the number is considerably low when compared to men (figure above) .There is a lot of ongoing research that investigates the reasons of less involvement of women in the field of Computer Science and IT. One of such studies, that also aims to remove barriers to the entry of women into IT careers lists several findings after surveying women from non-IT fields.
- Through our Computer Science for All Girls (CS4AllG) camps, our aim is to provide an all-girls environment where girls receive adequate attention from the teachers and also do not have to fear their male counterparts who have traditionally dominated the field of Computer science. CS4ALLG is an initiative to foster interest in computers in middle school and high school girls, and encourage them to take up careers in engineering. CS4ALLG (cs4allg.eng.auburn.edu) started as a pilot project which was a 3-day summer camp at Auburn University. This project aims to change the women's perception about CS and provide them with an engaging CS programming experience. We have observed that many girls are afraid of exploring new technologies on their own. With girls, sometimes more time and effort goes into discussion than in construction. The curriculum for CS4ALLG has been designed with keeping such factors in mind. The girls stay at the AU dorms for all three days of the camp and build strong relationships among themselves. It has been observed that when girls have a female mentor who succeeds in math and science, they are more likely to pursue degrees in science and technology related areas. For the CS4AllG camp we created a curriculum that uses a combination of CS Unplugged (CSU) kinesthetic activities and Microsoft Kodu. We also used the contemporary flipped classroom method to boost their self-confidence and reinforce the knowledge imparted to them. Kodu (http://www.kodugamelab.com/) is a programming framework that allows children as young as eight to construct computer games or simulations by writing behavior rules for the characters and objects. The main character in this 3D environment is Kodu, and it can be programmed to perform real-life tasks such as run, jump, and say.
- Kodu (http://www.kodugamelab.com/) is a programming framework that allows children as young as eight to construct computer games or simulations by writing behavior rules for the characters and objects. The main character in this 3D environment is Kodu, and it can be programmed to perform real-life tasks such as run, jump, and say. Our focus was to provide the girls with relational as well as technical concepts during the camp. We love to watch how each girl becomes more comfortable, confident and capable with the skills and abilities gained at the camp.
- These pictures were taken on the last day of the CS4ALLG Camps in 2014 and 2015.