The University of Pennsylvania proposes to develop and deploy a new CS service-learning course at the college level which will be integrated with the cascading mentoring of high and middle school students. The course - called College Service Learning Course to Promote and Increase COMPutational Thinking and ACTion (Penn COMP-ACT) - will train college students to teach K-12 computational activities. Penn COMP-ACT undergraduates will learn about computational thinking, and then they will teach and mentor high school and middle students in coordinated summer workshops and afterschool programs. The high school students will be engaged to work with the middle school students as well. This "learning-by-teaching" approach will improve all of the student's understanding of computational thinking and purposes by exposure to a variety of hands-on software design activities and materials. The Penn COMP-ACT course leverages several prior successful efforts including a pilot service-learning course set up in the CS course program, and the existing partnerships and programs within CS and Penn to recruit girls and minorities from the local community. It will be lead by an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, computer science and K-12 educators.
Penn COMPACT, a CS service learning course for undergraduates, introduced college students to core ideas of computational thinking, and prepared them to teach and mentor high school and middle school students in coordinated summer workshops and afterschool programs with hands?on activities. Project goals included: To demonstrate the feasibility of having college students become teachers and mentors of computational activities through a CS service-learning course by implementing it as part of the standard academic year program or as part of the summer course To broaden participation in computing not only at the college level but to start the process at middle and high schools through the creation of a cascading mentor model that has undergraduates teach and mentor high?school students and then engage these high school students to mentor middle school students To generate sample course activities and approaches for a service learning course that could be adopted by other colleges and universities. During the three years of the grant, over 300 middle school, high school, and college students in the Philadelphia region participated in computer science education workshops and summer boot camps. In the process, the cascading mentoring model was tested whereby undergraduates mentored high school students (primarily from underrepresented groups) and subsequently selected high school mentees in turn mentored other high school students and/or middle school students. Two methods were employed — the first was a service learning course approach while the second was a paid service learning approach. Students demonstrated learning by teaching as they mentored. Both approaches resulted in increased confidence, similar goals, and an increased understanding of computing. Both approaches broadened participation, with the course-related approach attracting more undergraduate women and underrepresented minorities than the paid mentor approach. Both approaches resulted in greater understanding of computing by teaching it, which ultimately created more realistic attitudes about computing. Although some attitudes were rated less positively after the mentoring experience, resilience and persistence in the major and the field might be positively affected by awareness. In response to logistical challenges with rostering the Penn COMPACT course, two service-learning courses were taught. The first course, EAS285, was an engineering elective which did not count towards a degree. As a result, overall enrollment was consistently low, although a high percentage were male students of color. To address this problem, in the third year a CS Principles (CSP) course for non-engineering students, with a 3-hour service-learning component, was introduced. It satisfied a formal reasoning requirement (as does calculus), and enrollment was high with a high percentage of females and students of color. While the EAS285 students both developed and taught learning modules, the CSP students taught modules provided by the instructor. The feasibility of college students at all levels as teachers and mentors was demonstrated. The impact of mentors on students at all levels was important to decisions about the college major. The effect of being a mentor at all levels was significant. Mentoring abilities improved, as did confidence, interest in teaching computer science, and interest in mentoring. The course-related mentors reported increased interest in the computing major and increased career interest. They were more likely to seek leadership positions after mentoring, showing that the experience of mentoring increased their confidence. While the course-related service learning approach attracted a high percentage of undergraduate females and minorities, the paid mentor position, advertised broadly to students who had already completed a computer science course in the engineering school, attracted an overwhelming majority of White and Asian males. The paid mentors liked computing better after the mentoring experience and they expressed greater confidence in their abilities to mentor than the course-related mentors. Overall, the project found that mentees learned about computing as a college major or career, increased their confidence, and had fun. Decisions about college major were not significantly changed by the experience of being mentored in CS camps and workshops. Ratings of computing expertise increased, though not significantly. Confidence of mentees increased. Satisfaction with the mentors and the workshop experiences overall were high. Mentors made an impact on the decisions of college major of more than one third of mentees. The computing camps and workshops were cited by more than half of mentees as having an impact on decisions about college major. Mentees rated the undergraduate and high school mentors as their strongest role models in the camps and workshops, over adult instructors and peers. Although the experience of being mentored did not significantly change many attitudes or plans immediately following camps and workshops, the long term impact of these positive experiences should be tracked. Exposure to computational thinking from respected mentors may impact recruiting for CS in the future.
