This project is adapting the Alice programming environment, a promising approach to improving CS retention, to a particular cultural environment. Universities in Hawaii are part of a unique environment in which the Hawaiian/Pacific Islands cultural heritage plays a large part. In this project, students are basing their open-ended larger programming projects on stories from the Hawaiian and Pacific Island treasure-trove of legends, mythology, traditions, and oral history. Students who are less mathematically-prepared or have no prior programming experience are placed into this course in order to better prepare them for the beginning programming course and subsequent courses in computer science.
