| Abstract |
Racial and gender representation among computer science (CS) students continues to lag behind national demographics in the U.S. One way to improve students' interests in CS is to connect CS to other fields to expand students' perceptions of what constitutes CS. While CS+X programs, which combine CS and another field into a single interdisciplinary degree, are expanding at the undergraduate level, there is room to further expand related opportunities in K-12 spaces to encourage more students to pursue CS. To this end, in this experience report we present a new CS+X topics course for high school students that teaches about the intersections of CS with several non-STEM "+X" fields. The course was designed by a team of educators with experience in K-12 curriculum design and broadening participation programs. We piloted the course at a high school in Spring 2023 with 11 students. We present our course design and breakdown of decisions made during the course design process. Further, we provide results from our evaluation survey, featuring thematic analysis of students' commentary and a breakdown of course topics and components students favored. Our students reported that their interests in computing and understanding of computing's broad impacts on society improved. We provide a reflection on the course's future refinements and our plans for further testing of the course in more high school environments to prepare it for wider community adoption. |
| Authors |
Kathleen Isenegger  , Max Fowler , Yael Gertner , Raya Hegeman-Davis  , Leonard Pitt
|
| Journal Info |
Not listed | SIGCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1
|
| Publication Date |
3/7/2024 |
| ISSN |
Not listed |
Type |
article |
| Open Access |
bronze
|
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630824 |
| Keywords |
Programming Education (Score: 0.523414) , Inclusive Science Education (Score: 0.512768)
|
