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Assessment of computer science learning in a scratch-based outreach program

Authors:

Diana Franklin,

Phillip Conrad,

Charlotte Hill,

Greg Dreschler,

Gerardo Aldana,

Paulo Almeida-Tanaka,

Christine Pham,

Jessica Suarez,

Robert WaiteAuthors Info & Claims

SIGCSE '13: Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

Pages 371 - 376

https://doi.org/10.1145/2445196.2445304

Published: 06 March 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Many institutions have created and deployed outreach programs for middle school students with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of students who later pursue careers in computer science. While these programs have been shown to increase interest in computer science, there has been less work on showing whether participants learn computer science content.

We address two questions, one specific, and the other more general: (1) "What computer science did our middle school students learn in our interdisciplinary two-week summer camp?" (2) "How can computer science concepts be assessed in the context of Scratch-based outreach programs"? We address both questions by presenting the design of our summer camp, an overview of our curriculum, our assessment methodology, and our assessment results.

Though the sample size is not statistically significant, the results show that a two-week, interdisciplinary, non-academic summer camp can be effective not only for engaging students, but also for imparting CS content. In just two weeks, with a curriculum not entirely focused on computer science, students displayed competence with event-driven programming, initialization of state, message passing, and say/sound synchronization. We have employed assessment methodologies that avoid written exams, an approach both outreach and classroom-based programs may find useful.

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Cited By

Liu JGoodwin EFranklin DStone JYuen TShoop LRebelsky SPrather J(2025)Student Utilization of Metacognitive Strategies in Solving Dynamic Programming ProblemsProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701888(687-693)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641554.3701888
Lewis MHolloman AHernández Cuevas BCrawford C(2024)Exploring Computational Thinking Perspectives in Black Communities with Physiological Computing2024 Black Issues in Computing Education (BICE)10.1109/BICE60192.2024.00013(27-32)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/BICE60192.2024.00013
Woo KFalloon G(2023)The Search for Computer Science Concepts in Coding Animated Narratives: Tensions and OpportunitiesJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633123117492961:7(1335-1358)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331231174929
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Assessment of computer science learning in a scratch-based outreach program
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy
  2. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGCSE '13: Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

March 2013

818 pages

ISBN:9781450318686

DOI:10.1145/2445196

Conference Chairs:
Tracy Camp
Colorado School of Mines
,
Paul Tymann
Rochester Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
J. D. Dougherty
Haverford College
,
Kris Nagel
Georgia Gwinnett College

Copyright © 2013 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 ACM 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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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 March 2013

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SIGCSE '13

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SIGCSE

SIGCSE '13: The 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

March 6 - 9, 2013

Colorado, Denver, USA

Acceptance Rates

SIGCSE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 111 of 293 submissions, 38%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,787 of 5,146 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

Liu JGoodwin EFranklin DStone JYuen TShoop LRebelsky SPrather J(2025)Student Utilization of Metacognitive Strategies in Solving Dynamic Programming ProblemsProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701888(687-693)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641554.3701888
Lewis MHolloman AHernández Cuevas BCrawford C(2024)Exploring Computational Thinking Perspectives in Black Communities with Physiological Computing2024 Black Issues in Computing Education (BICE)10.1109/BICE60192.2024.00013(27-32)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/BICE60192.2024.00013
Woo KFalloon G(2023)The Search for Computer Science Concepts in Coding Animated Narratives: Tensions and OpportunitiesJournal of Educational Computing Research10.1177/0735633123117492961:7(1335-1358)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331231174929
Jin YZha SCowart J(2023)In critical need of research-based instructional strategies and assessment: an investigation of ePCR math lesson plans for middle school studentsJournal of Research on Technology in Education10.1080/15391523.2023.223290057:2(351-374)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2023.2232900
Sadik OOttenbreit-Leftwich A(2023)Understanding U.S. secondary computer science teachers’ challenges and needsComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2023.2209474(1-33)Online publication date: 4-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2023.2209474
Dagienė VGülbahar YGrgurina NLópez-Pernas SSaqr MApiola MStupurienė G(2023)Computing Education Research in SchoolsPast, Present and Future of Computing Education Research10.1007/978-3-031-25336-2_20(481-520)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25336-2_20
Dodoo EGiroux CGuzdial M(2022)Designing from a Novel University Engineering Course as a Model for High School Education2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962450(1-8)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962450
Fagerlund JVesisenaho MHäkkinen P(2022)Fourth grade students’ computational thinking in pair programming with ScratchInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.10051133:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.100511
Lukkarinen AMalmi LHaaranen L(2021)Event-driven Programming in Programming EducationACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/342395621:1(1-31)Online publication date: 16-Mar-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3423956
Hogenboom SHermans FVan der Maas H(2021)Computerized adaptive assessment of understanding of programming concepts in primary school childrenComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2021.191446132:4(418-448)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2021.1914461
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