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(Ed.)
CSAwesome is a new approved curriculum and professional development (PD) provider
for the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) A high school course. AP courses
are taken by secondary (typically ages 14-19) students for college placement and/or
credit. CSAwesome's free curriculum and teacher resources were developed in 2019 by
adapting the CSA Java Review ebook on the open-source Runestone platform. The goals
of CSAwesome are to broaden participation in the AP CSA course and to support new-to-CS
students and teachers as they transition from the AP Computer Science Principles (CSP)
course to the AP CSA course by using inclusive teaching practices and curriculum design.
The AP CSP course is equivalent to a first course for non-majors at the college level,
while the AP CSA course is equivalent to a first course for majors. Currently, AP
CSA attracts a much less diverse student body than AP CSP. This new curriculum supports
student engagement and scaffolded learning through an interactive ebook with embedded
executable and modifiable code (Active Code), a variety of practice types with immediate
feedback, and adaptable mixed-up code (Parsons) problems. Collaborative learning is
encouraged through pair programming and groupwork. Our pilot Professional Development
(PD) incorporates inclusive teaching strategies and active recruitment with the goal
of broadening participation in CSA. This paper presents the design of the CSAwesome
curriculum and teacher professional development and initial results from the curriculum
use and pilot PD during the first year of CSAwesome.
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