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1. An Accessible Computing Curriculum for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

   Arslanyilmaz, A. ( March 2021 , Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   CT as an essential 21st-century skill and knowledge will be instrumental to new discovery and innovation in all fields of endeavor, and therefore, computing should be taught to all students alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, no computing curriculum has been designed and developed for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders. The objective of this study is to identify and report adaptations and accommodations needed to make an existing computational thinking (CT) curriculum accessible to students with ASD. This objective is accomplished by analyzing sixth-grade students’ characteristics at a school for students with ASD and developing the adaptations and accommodations. The data analyzed and reported for this study consists of systematic documentation of the adaptations and accommodations, including learning objectives, instructional design, information presentation, assessments, feedback, and learning environment. 

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2. Expanding Literacy’s Boundaries in K-12 with Cloud Literacy (Work in Progress)

   Billionniere, E. ; Meyer, Lawrence E. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   The migration of infrastructure from on premise installation and maintenance of computing resources to cloud based systems by business of all sizes has been an ongoing event for several years. To minimize capital expenses and allow for demand based operational expenses has increased the need for cloud practitioners with the ability to create and control these resources. The demand for skilled cloud workers ranging from developers to architects has been increasing, and one way to increase the technicians available for these job skills is to start recruitment as early as high school. For high school students interested in the technical side of STEM pathways, the ability to understand, design and work in a cloud environment is now part of critical technical skills. Fluency in cloud and cloud environments, the ability to understand the capabilities of all these modern technologies are necessary technical skills. To support this growing demand of cloud skills, the institution partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing solutions, to train high school students as early cloud adopters and to be well-prepared for the computing/IT workforce of tomorrow. This academic-industry partnership aims to raise cloud literacy in K-12 by offering a two-week cloud computing bootcamp for high school students selected from traditionally underrepresented groups, Hispanic and/or African Americans. The bootcamp used a combination of team teaching, online sandbox repetition and experimentation, and project-based practice. The AWS materials provided by AWS Academy covered the details of the AWS infrastructure and were coupled with AWS Educate classroom sandboxes for practice. The two-week intensive practice and review certified 21 out of 31 high school students in the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification. This was the first time AWS Academy authorized high school students to take the certification exam and currently the largest cohort of high school students as AWS Cloud Practitioners. This paper presents the details of the pilot implementation of the summer bootcamp part of the cloud literacy initiative. This pilot includes curriculum, pedagogy, and software tools. Surveys were administered to the students to collect their demographic information, assessments of the pedagogical approaches and interest in cloud computing. Also, pre- and post-exam scores were reported to analyze student performance outcomes. These results are presented to show the potential of such an outreach program to build capacity and broaden participation in the computing field through emerging technology. 

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3. Multi-Disciplinary Summer Orientation Sessions for First-Year Students in Engineering, Engineering Technology, Physics, and Computer Science

   https://doi.org/10.18260/p.25760  

   Novoa, Clara ; Ortiz, Araceli ; Talley, Kimberly ( January 2016 , American Society of Engineering Education)

   This work in progress is motivated by a self-study conducted at Texas State University. The study revealed that the average second year science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) student retention rate is 56% vs. 67% for all majors, and that 16% of STEM majors are female while 57% of all undergraduate students are female. Using these statistics, the authors identified the need to offer motivating experiences to freshman in STEM while creating a sense of community among other STEM students. This paper reports on the impact of two interventions designed by the authors and aligned with this need. The interventions are: (1) a one-day multi- disciplinary summer orientation (summer15) to give participants the opportunity to undertake projects that demonstrate the relevance of spatial and computational thinking skills and (2) a subsequent six-week spatial visualization skills training (fall 2015) for students in need to refine these skills. The interventions have spatial skills as a common topic and introduce participants to career applications through laboratory tours and talks. Swail et al.1 mentions that the three elements to address in order to best support students’ persistence and achievement are cognitive, social, and institutional factors. The interventions address all elements to some extent and are part of an NSF IUSE grant (2015-2018) to improve STEM retention. The summer 2015 orientation was attended by 17 freshmen level students in Physics, Engineering, Engineering Technology, and Computer Science. The orientation was in addition to “Bobcat Preview”, a separate mandatory one-week length freshman orientation that includes academic advising and educational and spirit sessions to acclimate students to the campus. The effectiveness of the orientation was assessed through exit surveys administered to participants. Current results are encouraging; 100% of the participants answered that the orientation created a space to learn about science and engineering, facilitated them to make friends and encouraged peer interaction. Eighty percent indicated that the orientation helped them to build confidence in their majors. Exit survey findings were positively linked to a former exit survey from an orientation given to a group of 18 talented and low-income students in 2013. The training on refining spatial visualization skills connects to the summer orientation by its goals. It offers freshman students in need to refine spatial skills a further way to increase motivation to STEM and create community among other students. It is also an effective approach to support students’ persistence and achievement. Bairaktarova et al.2 mention that spatial skills ability is gradually becoming a standard assessment of an individual’s likelihood to succeed as an engineer. Metz et al.3 report that well-developed spatial skills have been shown to lead to success in Engineering and Technology, Computer Science, Chemistry, Computer Aided Design and Mathematics. The effectiveness of the fall 2015 training was assessed through comparison between pre and post tests results and exit surveys administered to participants. All participants improved their pre-training scores and average improvement in students’ scores was 18.334%. 

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4. Multi-Disciplinary Orientation Sessions for Fist-Year Students in Engineering, Engineering Technology, Physics, and Computer Science

   Novoa, C. ; Martinez, Ortiz A. ; Talley, K.G. ( January 2016 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This work in progress is motivated by a self-study conducted at Texas State University. The study revealed that the average second year science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) student retention rate is 56% vs. 67% for all majors, and that 16% of STEM majors are female while 57% of all undergraduate students are female. Using these statistics, the authors identified the need to offer motivating experiences to freshman in STEM while creating a sense of community among other STEM students. This paper reports on the impact of two interventions designed by the authors and aligned with this need. The interventions are: (1) a one-day multi- disciplinary summer orientation (summer15) to give participants the opportunity to undertake projects that demonstrate the relevance of spatial and computational thinking skills and (2) a subsequent six-week spatial visualization skills training (fall 2015) for students in need to refine these skills. The interventions have spatial skills as a common topic and introduce participants to career applications through laboratory tours and talks. Swail et al.[1] mentions that the three elements to address in order to best support students’ persistence and achievement are cognitive, social, and institutional factors. The interventions address all elements to some extent and are part of an NSF IUSE grant (2015-2018) to improve STEM retention. The summer 2015 orientation was attended by 17 freshmen level students in Physics, Engineering, Engineering Technology, and Computer Science. The orientation was in addition to “Bobcat Preview”, a separate mandatory one-week length freshman orientation that includes academic advising and educational and spirit sessions to acclimate students to the campus. The effectiveness of the orientation was assessed through exit surveys administered to participants. Current results are encouraging; 100% of the participants answered that the orientation created a space to learn about science and engineering, facilitated them to make friends and encouraged peer interaction. Eighty percent indicated that the orientation helped them to build confidence in their majors. Exit survey findings were positively linked to a former exit survey from an orientation given to a group of 18 talented and low-income students in 2013. The training on refining spatial visualization skills connects to the summer orientation by its goals. It offers freshman students in need to refine spatial skills a further way to increase motivation to STEM and create community among other students. It is also an effective approach to support students’ persistence and achievement. Bairaktarova et al.[2] mention that spatial skills ability is gradually becoming a standard assessment of an individual’s likelihood to succeed as an engineer. Metz et al.[3] report that well-developed spatial skills have been shown to lead to success in Engineering and Technology, Computer Science, Chemistry, Computer Aided Design and Mathematics. The effectiveness of the fall 2015 training was assessed through comparison between pre and post tests results and exit surveys administered to participants. All participants improved their pre-training scores and average improvement in students’ scores was 18.334%. 

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5. An Engineering Computational Thinking Diagnostic: A Psychometric Analysis

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE49875.2021.9637142  

   Diaz, Noemi V. ; Trytten, Deborah A. ; Meier, Russ ; Yoon, So Yoon ( October 2021 , 2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   This research-track work-in-progress paper contributes to engineering education by documenting progress in developing a new standard Engineering Computational Thinking Diagnostic to measure engineering student success in five factors of computational thinking. Over the past year, results from an initial validation attempt were used to refine diagnostic questions. A second statistical validation attempt was then completed in Spring 2021 with 191 student participants at three universities. Statistics show that all diagnostic questions had statistically significant factor loadings onto one general computational thinking factor that incorporates the five original factors of (a) Abstraction, (b) Algorithmic Thinking, (c) Decomposition, (d) Data Representation and Organization, and (e) Impact of Computing. This result was unexpected as our goal was a diagnostic that could discriminate among the five factors. A small population size caused by the virtual delivery of courses during the COVID-19 pandemic may be the explanation and a third round of validation in Fall 2021 is expected to result in a larger population given the return to face-to-face instruction. When statistical validation is completed, the diagnostic will help institutions identify students with strong entry level skills in computational thinking as well as students that require academic support. The diagnostic will inform curriculum design by demonstrating which factors are more accessible to engineering students and which factors need more time and focus in the classroom. The long-term impact of a successfully validated computational thinking diagnostic will be introductory engineering courses that better serve engineering students coming from many backgrounds. This can increase student self- efficacy, improve student retention, and improve student enculturation into the engineering profession. Currently, the diagnostic identifies general computational thinking skill 

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