Congratulations on your new NSF grant! As you join the other CS10K projects and begin your professional development and other activities, we want to introduce you to the community. There are 11 projects in the 2014 cohort, with a wide variety of approaches: three projects focus on Exploring Computer Science (ECS), five on Computer Science Principles (CSP), and three are not course-specific. Many projects are extensions of previous NSF Math Science Partnership grants, and a number contain an online component that enables reaching rural areas and underfunded schools.
We encourage all of you to use the CS10K Community as a home for mini-communities for your own projects AND as a way to connect with those in other projects. Everyone in the community is determined to bring the opportunities of computer science to all students in the country – a challenging task. By sharing our ideas and experiences, we can help all to succeed. Please read about your fellow projects and reach out to each other, as well as to the 2012 and 2013 CS10K grantees. Post your best shared ideas as resources on the community site!
Maine ECS: Building Capacity for Computer Science Teaching in a Rural State
Thomas Keller
Maine Math & Science Alliance
Augusta, ME
ECS
MSPinNYC2: A New Partnership to Transform Urban Secondary School Mathematics and Science Experiences
Pamela Mills
CUNY
New York, NY
ECS
CS-CaVE: Computer Science: Creating A Village for Educators
Diane Baxter
UCSD
San Diego, CA
CSP
Project Engage II: Training Secondary Teachers to Deliver Computer Science and Engineering Instruction
David Allen
University of Texas Austin
Austin, TX
CSP
CL4CSP: Infusing Cooperative Learning into Computer Science Principles Courses to Promote Engagement and Diversity
Jeffery Gray
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL
CSP
BJC-A&A: Beauty and Joy, Adapted and Adopted: Building a Computational Teaching Cadre from within Wyoming Schools
Lynne Ipina
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY
CSP
TeachIT: Scaling Mobile CSP Professional Development Online
Jennifer Rosato
College of Saint Scholastica
Duluth, MN
CSP
AccessCS10K: Including Students with Disabilities in Computing Education for the Twenty-First Century
Richard Ladner
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Both
RITES: Rhode Island Technology Enhanced Science Program
Daniel Murray
University of Rhode Island
Providence, RI
Both
MSP2: Minority Student Pipeline Math Science Partnership
Anisha Campbell
UMD System
Bowie, MD
New Exploring Computer Science Projects
The three new ECS projects are “Expanding Pathways into Computer Science” (EPCS); “Building Capacity for Computer Science Teaching in a Rural State” (Maine ECS); and “A New Partnership to Transform Urban Secondary School Mathematics and Science Experiences” (MSPinNYC2).
EPCS, in the Black Hills Region of South Dakota, is led by Prof. Bentley Sayler of Black Hills State University. The project aims to develop and expand pathways from ECS into the study of CS in college, especially for students who might not otherwise picture themselves learning the subject. Speaking about EPCS, Co-PI, Dr. June Apaza was quoted saying:
"Often the most unlikely learner, the student who isn’t necessarily successful in a lot of other things, is really good at computer science. This class will be open to all students who have interest.”
Maine ECS is led by Dr. Tom Seller of the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance. It expects to develop a curriculum to train mostly current teachers of math to teach ECS, in a manner that focuses on how CS is used in companies in all sectors across the state of Maine. It will develop a CS Teaching Methods course available online through the University of Maine at Augusta, and aims to train 75 current teachers of math to teach ECS.
MSPinNYC2, led by Prof. Pamela Mills of Hunter College, follows on a previous Math Science Partnership project in New York City that itself extended the promising pilot, Peer Enabled Restructured Classroom (PERC). PERC restructured 9th grade STEM courses by having 10th grade Teaching Assistant (TA) Scholars facilitate classroom activity, helping the 10th grade tutors achieve content mastery, while increasing the chances of passing for the 9th grade pupils. The project expanded into CS and now has three teachers teaching five sections of ECS in schools across the city.
New Computer Science Principles Projects
The five CSP projects are “Computer Science: Creating A Village for Educators” (CS-CaVE); “Training Secondary Teachers to Deliver Computer Science and Engineering Instruction” (Project Engage II); “Infusing Cooperative Learning into Computer Science Principles Courses to Promote Engagement and Diversity” (CL4CSP); “Beauty and Joy, Adapted and Adopted: Building a Computational Teaching Cadre from within Wyoming Schools” (BJC A&A); and “TeachIT: Scaling Mobile CSP Professional Development Online.” All build on earlier CS10K projects; the first three of these are direct follow-ons and the last two adapt results of other projects.
CS-CaVE will build villages of district- and peer-based support, both in person and virtual, for teachers learning to teach CSP. The teachers will follow the professional development curriculum of USCD’s earlier CS10K project, Computing Principles for All Students’ Success (ComPASS). Both these grants were led by UCSD Prof. Diane Baxter. CS-CaVE will create this network of support in three major secondary San Diego districts. The project also aims to ensure the currency of the training program through district-based structure in conjunction with the university.
CL4CSP is led by Prof. Jeff Gray at the University of Alabama, who also led an earlier grant, “A Model for Statewide Deployment of CSP Courses.” The new grant, which involves Duke University and Rutgers University, will introduce Collaborative Learning (CL) practices into CSP to support and engage students of differing abilities. CL involves learning in groups and through discovery. The CSP curriculum is designed to be attractive for a diverse set of students; CL will complement this design by developing an engaging manner to teach that curriculum.
Project Engage II is an expansion of the first so-named CS10K project and also builds on a NSF funded Math Science Partnership project. Led by Prof. David Allen of UT Austin, it supports the implementation of a CPS curriculum called Thriving in Our Digital World (TODW). A major focus of this project is scalability: of teacher professional development; of the TODW curriculum itself; and of assessment tools and processes. Teacher professional development will involve a flipped classroom model, and a novel student work assessment approach that uses machine learning techniques to incorporate expert scoring from the university CS professors into the novice scoring by newly trained CS teachers. Developing this scalable approach to will help equip enough teachers to provide CS instruction to as many students as possible.
BJC-A&A, led by Prof. Lynne Ipina of the University of Wyoming, adopts the “Beauty and Joy of Computing” curriculum from that earlier CS10K project, and adapts it to the interests of the students of Wyoming by including alternative units, such as global climate model simulations. It will begin with pilot programs in two counties and extends it to other counties, with the ultimate goal of reaching all counties in the state.
TeachIT, led by Prof. Jennifer Rosato of the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota, intends to create an online format to scale teacher professional development for teaching Mobile CSP, a particular version of the CSP curriculum developed by Trinity College. An online summer course will be followed with ongoing online mentoring and support throughout the school year. Scaling up professional development in this way enables it to reach teachers in rural and underfund schools, so not only does it reach more teachers, it reaches those who might not otherwise be able to learn how to teach computer science to their high school students.
Non-Course Specific Projects
Three of the newly funded projects are not course specific: “Including Students with Disabilities in Computing Education for the Twenty-First Century” (AccessCS10K); “Rhode Island Technology Enhanced Science Program” (RITES); and “Minority Student Pipeline Math Science Partnership” (MSP2).
Access CS10K, led by Prof. Richard Ladner of the University of Washington, aims to increase the successful participation of students with disabilities in ECS and CSP. It is unique in its goal of partnering with many other CS10K grantees, to help them increase accessibility in their programs as they train the new teachers of these CS10K courses. Access CS10K will develop online tutorials and real-time individual support for teachers, and will create accessible tools as well as curricular units that ECS and CSP teachers and students can use in their classrooms. Prof. Ladner and his team are also advising and assisting the CS10K Community development team on increasing the accessibility of this site.
RITES, led by Prof. Daniel Murray of the University of Rhode Island, is a continuation of a 2008 NSF Math Science Partnership grant that aimed to transform the quality of science education in all Rhode Island secondary schools, increasing the number of high school students proficient in science and planning on STEM careers. The core of this project involved integrating all segments of the state’s educational community, reaching all middle school and high school teachers and students. The new grant will expand this work by including the teaching of CSP and the use of ECS as a template to introduce computational thinking.
MSP2, led by Prof. Anisha Campbell of Bowie State University in Maryland, is also a continuation of a NSF Math Science Partnership grant. That grant proposed to establish a partnership with the educational community of Prince George’s County, MD, one of the largest minority-majority counties in the country, to increase the number of minority students engaging in higher education in STEM fields, including computer science.
