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1. Bulldog Bytes: Engaging Elementary Girls with Computer Science and Cybersecurity. Journal of Transactions on Techniques in STEM Education. 2018 (January-September); 3(2):76-81. ISSN: 2381-649X

   Lineberry, Litany; Lee, Sarah; Ivy, Jessica; Bostick, Heather (September 2018, Transactions on techniques in STEM education)

   Responsive to broadening participation challenges, Mississippi State University (MSU) established the Bulldog Bytes Outreach Program in 2013 with a residential summer camp for middle school girls funded through the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT). Since then the program has grown to provide co-curricular activities to K12 students throughout the state. Following a pilot offering of an elementary camp in 2016, the Bulldog Bytes program delivered two of these camps in small towns during 2017, supporting a strategy of engaging under-resourced students with computing in their home communities. This paper will detail our project-based approach to learning and share experiences from the elementary camps. 

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2. Evaluation of Summer Camp Recruitment Methods and Campers’ Perceptions of Engineering (Evaluation, Diversity)

   Fleming, Gabriella Coloyan; Fernandez, Kiersten Elyse; Julien, Christine; Mastronardi, Marialice (June 2023, 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Program leaders put a tremendous amount of thought into how they recruit students for engineering summer camps. Recruitment methods can include information sessions, established partnerships with school districts, and teacher or school counselor nominations of students. This study seeks to assess if the methods used to recruit students broaden participation or have any impact on students’ perceptions of engineering. Two identical week-long summer camps were hosted by the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) in the summer of 2022. Camps were entirely free for all campers. A specific goal of the camp was to promote engineering as a career pathway for students from groups that have been historically excluded from STEM majors. Campers were rising 8th and 9th grade students in two cities near UT Austin; this age was intentionally identified as students who have sufficient STEM backgrounds to engage in meaningful engineering design challenges, and who are also at a critical inflection point with respect to decisions that put them on a trajectory to study engineering in college. Summer camp topics ranged from additive manufacturing to the chemical properties of water proofing, and students did activities such as constructing a prosthetic limb from recovered materials or designing an electronic dance game pad. In one camp session, students primarily found out about the camp by being nominated by counselors at their schools, with an intentional focus on recruiting students who might not otherwise be exposed to engineering. In the other camp session, parents signed up campers after hearing about the camp via information sent through the schools. All students who applied were accepted to the camps. Identical pre- and post-camp surveys asked campers questions about their knowledge of what engineers do, their interest in math and science, and what factors are important to them when choosing a career. Survey analysis showed that there were statistically significant differences in answers to questions between the groups in the pre-camp surveys, but post-camp surveys show that these differences disappeared after participating in the summer camp. Students whose parents directly enrolled them in the camp had higher pre-camp interest in science and technology; thus, counselor nominations may be a method to recruit students who might not have been interested in engineering had they not attended the camp. Additionally, prior to participating, campers recruited via counselor nominations had a narrower view of what engineers do than the parent-enrolled campers, but after camp the two groups had similar perceptions of what engineers do. The results of this study confirm literature findings regarding the importance of exposing young learners to engineering as a profession and broaden their views of opportunities in this field. The recruitment methods used for these camps show that nomination-based recruitment methods have the potential for greater impact on changing students’ engineering trajectories. 

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3. Making Apps: An Approach to Recruiting Youth to Computer Science

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3425710  

   Clarke-Midura, Jody; Sun, Chongning; Pantic, Katarina (November 2020, ACM Transactions on Computing Education)

   null (Ed.)

   In response to the need to broaden participation in computer science, we designed a summer camp to teach middle-school-aged youth to code apps with MIT App Inventor. For the past four summers, we have observed significant gains in youth's interest and self-efficacy in computer science, after attending our camps. The majority of these youth, however, were youth from our local community. To provide equal access across the state and secure more diversity, we were interested in examining the effect of the camp on a broader population of youth. Thus, we partnered with an outreach program to reach and test our camps on youth from low-income high-poverty areas in the Intermountain West. During the summer of 2019, we conducted two sets of camps: locally advertised app camps that attracted youth from our local community and a second set of camps as part of a larger outreach program for youth from low-income high-poverty areas. The camps for both populations followed the same design of personnel, camp activities, structure, and curriculum. However, the background of the participants was slightly different. Using survey data, we found that the local sample experienced significant gains in both self-efficacy and interest, while the outreach group only reported significant gains in self-efficacy after attending the camp. However, the qualitative data collected from the outreach participants indicated that they had a positive experience both with the camp and their mentors. In this article, we discuss the camp design and findings in relation to strategies for broadening participation in Computer Science education. 

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4. The effect of engineering summer camps on middle school students interest and identity

   Chatterjee, I; Kirn, A; Amos, J (June 2018, ASEE annual conference & exposition proceedings)

   A persistent problem in engineering is an insufficient number of students interested in pursuing engineering as a college major and career. Middle school is a critical time where student interest, identity, and career choices begin to solidify. Student interest in engineering at the K-12 level has been shown to predict whether they pursue engineering as a college major and career. Therefore, research is needed to determine if engineering summer camp activities affect engineering interest and identity in middle school students and in this paper, we present a research study approach to achieve the stated objective. To develop engineering-specific theories of how engineers are formed, this paper explores interest and identity development of three middle-school populations participating in engineering summer camps offered by the College of Engineering at a Western land-grant institution: (1) Young women in engineering camp (2) First generation camp and, (3) Introduction to engineering camp. The camps are identical in content and designed with the goal of increasing understanding of different engineering fields and careers. The only difference between the three camps is that the women-focused and first generation camps involve participation of guest speakers and role-model mentors appropriate for the camp populations. The main objective of designing this mixed-methods research study is to answer three research questions: (1) How strongly are engineering identity and interest linked to the intention to pursue engineering as a major in college and as a future career? (2) Which specific activities in the camps lead to a change in identity and interest in engineering? (3) To what extent and in what ways do the qualitative participant focus group interviews and observations of participants engaged in camp activities addressing research question (2) contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the quantitative data obtained via pre- and post-surveys addressing research question (1)? The research design leverages existing quantitative surveys. Additionally, focus groups and observations will be based on a selected set of questions from these surveys. The research design consists of one phase with two data streams. Quantitative data are gathered in Phase 1 from two data collection points: first, when students register for the camp and, second, at the end of the camp (post-survey). Qualitative data in the form of in-depth focus group interviews (at the end of the camp) with 4 – 5 participants per focus group and observations of camp activities during the five days of camp are implemented. For the qualitative analysis, Grounded Theory is utilized for analyzing focus group interview and observation transcripts using an iterative process that involves reading, discussing, and coding. This paper will present details of the quantitative and qualitative analysis methods used for this study. The research is funded by the National Science Foundation PFE:RIEF program. 

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5. Incorporating Complexity in Computing Camps for High School Students – A Report on the Summer Computing Academy Program at Texas A&M University

   https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/11/1/3  

   Chakravorty, D; Pennings, M; Liu, H.; Thomas, X.; Rodriguez, D.; and Perez, M. (January 2020, Journal of computational science education)

   Summer computing camps for high school students are rapidly becoming a staple at High Performance Computing (HPC) centers and Computer Science departments around the country. Developing complexity in education in these camps remains a challenge. Here, we present a report about the implementation of such a program. The Summer Computing Academy (SCA) at is a weeklong cybertraining1 program offered to high school students by High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) at Texas A&M University (Texas A&M; TAMU). The Summer Computing Academy effectively uses cloud computing paradigms, artificial intelligence technologies coupled with Raspberry Pi micro-controllers and sensors to demonstrate “computational thinking”. The program is steeped in well- reviewed pedagogy; the refinement of the educational methods based on constant assessment is a critical factor that has contributed to its success. The hands-on exercises included in the program have received rave reviews from parents and students alike. The camp program is financially self-sufficient and has successfully broadened participation of underrepresented groups in computing by including diverse groups of students. Modules from the SCA program may be implemented at other institutions with relative ease and promote cybertraining efforts nationwide. 

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