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1. Unplugged Robotics to Increase K-12 Students' Engineering Interest and Attitudes

   Miller, Blanca; Anderson, Mercedes; Major, Justin; Jurkiewicz, Melissa; Kirn, Adam (October 2018, Frontiers in Education)

   The impact of technology on workforce development and socio-economic prosperity has made K-12 computing engineering and STEM in general a national educational priority. However, the integration of computing remains obstructed by resources and lack of professional development to support students’ learning. Further challenging is that students’ STEM attitudes and interest do not matriculate with them into higher education. This issue is especially critical for traditionally underrepresented and underserved populations including females, racial/ethnic minority groups, and students of low-socioeconomic status (SES). To help mitigate these challenges, we developed an unplugged (computer-less) computing engineering and robotics lesson composed of three introductory computing concepts, sequencing, debugging, and sensing/ decision- making, using a small robot-arm and tangible programming blocks. Through students’ sequencing of operations, debugging, and executing of complex robotic behavior, we seek to determine if students’ interest or attitudes change toward engineering. Nine one-hour introductory pilot lessons with 148 students, grades 6-10, at two public middle schools, and one summer camp were conducted. For 43% of students, this was their first time participating in an engineering lesson. We measured students’ engineering interest and attitudes through a 15 question pre- and post-lesson survey and calculated aggregate factor scores for interest and attitudes. We found low-SES students’ a priori interests and attitudes tend to be lower and more varied than those of their high-SES peers. These preliminary results suggest that the integration of introductory computing and robotics lessons in low-SES classrooms may help students reach similar levels of engineering interest and attitudes as their high-SES peers. 

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2. Increasing Minority Youths' Participation in Computing through Near-Peer Mentorship

   Lee, Michael J (October 2019, Journal of computing sciences in colleges)

   It is critical to focus on diversity and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in computing. To address this need, we must better understand minorities' access to role models and mentors, especially at a young age, as research and practice shows that these relationships can affect students' self-efficacy and motivation in the educational fields and careers they choose to pursue. We provided a 9-Saturday programming camp to middle school students in Newark, New Jersey with near-peer mentors (first year, college student instructors) to learn more about the younger students' initial access to role-models and mentors, and how an intervention might change this. Our camp served a total of 28 minority students (17 males and 11 females; grades 5-7) from a low-income, urban area. We found that when asked at the beginning of the camp, our middle students largely reported that they did not have any role-models or mentors in computing. However, at the conclusion of the camp, these same students indicated that they developed strong connections with their near-peer mentors and even saw them as role-models. These findings highlight the need for more mentorship opportunities for students of all ages, and the importance of providing resources and support to help develop and nurture these connections. 

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3. Lessons Learned From Teaching Artificial Intelligence to Middle School Students

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3545947.3576315  

   Touretzky, David; Gardner-McCune, Christina; Cox, Bryan; Uchidiuno, Judith; Kolodner, Janet; Stapleton, Patriel (March 2023, SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2)

   The AI4GA project is developing a nine-week elective course called Living and Working with Artificial Intelligence and piloting it in several Georgia middle schools. Since we aspire to educate all students about AI, the course addresses a wide range of student abilities, levels of academic preparedness, and prior computing experience, and leaves room for teachers to adapt the material to their own students' needs and interests. The course content is primarily focused on unplugged activities and online demonstration programs. We also provide small programming projects using AI tools as an option for teachers to incorporate. In this poster we describe lessons learned from initial pilot offerings by five teachers who taught 12 sections of the course totaling 299 students. We present evidence that middle school students can successfully engage with substantive technical content about Artificial Intelligence. 

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4. Examining the Design and Outcomes of an After-School Physical Computing Program in Middle-School

   Veng, S.; Mouza, C.; Pollock, L. (January 2023, Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference)

   This work examines the application of high-quality pedagogical practices in the design and implementation of an after-school physical computing program aimed at providing middle school students with access to computer science (CS) education. It subsequently examines how the program influenced students’ learning of CS concepts and attitudes towards computing. The program was designed and implemented through a school-university partnership, and 66 middle school students voluntarily participated. There were two cohorts of students in the study. Results indicate that the program had a positive impact on students’ understanding of CS concepts, and a significant impact on attitudes towards computing was seen among those in the second cohort. Implications are drawn for the design of informal after-school programs aimed at broadening participation in computing. 

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5. Out-of-school time STEM program: Students’ attitudes toward and career interests in mathematics and science

   https://doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v8i2.18702  

   Saw, Guan; Swagerty, Brendan; Brewington, Shon; Chang, Chi-Ning; Culbertson, Ryan (February 2019, International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE))

   Internationally, out-of-school time (OST) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs abound. However, rigorous evidence of their impacts on student outcomes is scarce. This study evaluated the relationships between OST STEM program participation and student motivational factors in math and science by analyzing survey and administrative data of 1.017 middle school students who participated in the seven-week, STEM-focused Prefreshman Engineering Program (PREP) in San Antonio, Texas, from 2015 to 2017. Multiple regression results indicated that the PREP participation was positively associated with students’ attitudes toward math and interests in math-related careers, whereas the effects on students’ attitudes toward science and career interests in science were negligible. No evidence was found to suggest that the associations between PREP participation and student motivational factors in math and science differed by gender, race/ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. 

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