research-article

Introducing Middle School Students to Computational Thinking with the CS First Curriculum

Authors:

James B. Fenwick, Jr.,

Cindy NorrisAuthors Info & Claims

ACMSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Southeast Conference

Pages 10 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/3374135.3385264

Published: 25 May 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Computational thinking (CT) is a set of concepts and problem-solving skills that are not only imperative for computer scientists, but important and applicable to nearly every discipline. CT skills are essential in a world where technology is ubiquitous. In the past decade, many efforts have been made to develop and evaluate computational thinking in primary and secondary students. Promoting CT skills in these young students can help reduce the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM careers since students who are exposed to CT at an early age are more likely to pursue a STEM discipline in college [18].

This paper describes the COSMIC program, funded by Google's Tides Foundation, that introduces middle school students to CS and CT using the CS First curriculum and Scratch. The COSMIC activities spanned three years directly serving 700 students through 175 distinct events. Females comprised 51.1% of the individuals served, and 10.2% of those served were part of a minority group. The COSMIC activities allowed the researchers to investigate the effectiveness of the CS First curriculum. Using the Hairball-powered Dr. Scratch analysis tool on the curricular projects, the paper reports on the efficacy of the CS First curriculum in terms of its coverage of vital CT concepts and its success in transferring those concepts to middle school students.

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Cited By

Tran M(2023)Prompt Engineering for Large Language Models to Support K-8 Computer Science Teachers in Creating Culturally Responsive ProjectsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 210.1145/3568812.3603453(110-112)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568812.3603453
Vinu Varghese VRenumol V(2021)Assessment Methods and Interventions to Develop Computational Thinking — A Literature Review2021 International Conference on Innovative Trends in Information Technology (ICITIIT)10.1109/ICITIIT51526.2021.9399606(1-7)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICITIIT51526.2021.9399606

Index Terms

Introducing Middle School Students to Computational Thinking with the CS First Curriculum
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computational thinking
      2. K-12 education

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cover image ACM Conferences

ACMSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Southeast Conference

April 2020

337 pages

ISBN:9781450371056

DOI:10.1145/3374135

Conference Chair:
Morris Chang,
Program Chair:
Dan Lo,
Publications Chair:
Eric Gamess

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 25 May 2020

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ACM SE '20: 2020 ACM Southeast Conference

April 2 - 4, 2020

FL, Tampa, USA

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Cited By

Tran M(2023)Prompt Engineering for Large Language Models to Support K-8 Computer Science Teachers in Creating Culturally Responsive ProjectsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 210.1145/3568812.3603453(110-112)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3568812.3603453
Vinu Varghese VRenumol V(2021)Assessment Methods and Interventions to Develop Computational Thinking — A Literature Review2021 International Conference on Innovative Trends in Information Technology (ICITIIT)10.1109/ICITIIT51526.2021.9399606(1-7)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICITIIT51526.2021.9399606

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