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Most U.S. states support college-readiness and access through dual enrollment, in which high school students enroll in college courses. Concurrent enrollment (CE) allows students to take college courses in their own high school, taught by high school teachers approved by the partner college. CE has positive effects on students' education, but rarely is CS available through CE. Unlike AP, CE provides college credit to students who are assessed throughout the course rather than by a single high-stakes exam/project. This panel will showcase four different types of post-secondary institutions' experiences offering CS-through-CE and discuss its potential as an entry point into CS for students underrepresented in computing, including those in urban and rural settings. Panelists will share challenges (such as teacher credentialing) and benefits of CS-through-CE. The audience will understand supports and barriers to creating CS-through-CE courses, will be provided with resources, and will crowd-source possible next steps in implementing CE as a model for broadening participation.
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Administrator’s perspectives on an engineering program aimed at broadening participation.
This work explores the experiences of administrators supporting teachers in the [redacted] program which emphasizes broadening participation in engineering at the high school level. In order to understand how efforts to broaden participation can leverage multiple levels of the school system, this work sought to identify the experiences of administrators. Two rounds of convenience samples of administrators in public and independent schools occurred in spring and fall of 2022. This recruitment led to two focus groups (with both public and independent school administrators) and a single administrator interview (independent school). During these conversations, administrators were asked to reflect on the implementation of the [redacted] program at their school, their personal experiences with this process, and barriers or suggestions in expanding this program both locally and more broadly. The transcripts of these interviews and focus groups were analyzed using descriptive coding (Saldaña, 2014) by two researchers. The researchers then met and compared codes to ensure inter-rater reliability with a percent agreement above 90%. During this process the codes were categorized and then emergent themes were identified. The findings indicate that administrators have a range of personal experience with implementing this engineering program, and that often these experiences were reported as a benefit to the entire school. For instance, administrators often referred to connections made to local universities by or as a result of the program, which then served as a positive outcome for the school at large. This suggests that a multifaceted approach to implementing engineering courses at the high school level which includes curriculum as well as human connections is seen as a benefit by administrators. Administrators also refer to the coursework and teacher actions as supporting the goal of broadening participation by speaking about specific engineering projects that engage a variety of learners, mostly through the type of project employed within the course. Finally, the administrators identified potential barriers to implementing engineering programs on their campus, with most barriers relating to teacher staffing issues, such as the need to engage in professional development to train these teachers externally. The themes that emerged from these various administrators perspectives provide an understanding of how to approach broadening participation through leveraging the role of administrators and how to encourage communication within the school system to create more access for students both to enroll in the engineering courses and to see a future self within engineering.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2120746
- PAR ID:
- 10435550
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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