Creating pathways that stimulate high school learners’ interest in advanced topics with the goal of building a diverse, gender-balanced, future-ready workforce is crucial. To this end, we present the curriculum of a new, high school computer science course under development called Computer Science Frontiers (CSF). Building on the foundations set by the AP Computer Science Principles course, we seek to dramatically expand access, especially for high school girls, to the most exciting and emerging frontiers of computing, such as distributed computation, the internet of things (IoT), cybersecurity, and machine learning. The modular, open-access, hands-on curriculum provides an engaging introduction to these advanced topics in high school because currently they are accessible only to CS majors in college. It also focuses on other 21st century skills required to productively leverage computational methods and tools in virtually every profession. To address the dire gender disparity in computing, the curriculum was designed to engage female students by focusing on real world application domains, such as climate change and health, by including social applications and by emphasizing collaboration and
teamwork.
Our paper describes the design of curricular modules on Distributed Computing, IoT/Cybersecurity, and AI/Machine Learning. All project-based activities are designed to be collaborative, situated in contexts that are engaging to high school students, and often involve real-world world data. We piloted these modules in teacher PD workshops with 8 teachers from North Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York who then facilitated virtual summer camps with high school students in 2020 and 2021. Findings from teacher PD workshops as well as student camps indicate high levels of engagement in and enthusiasm for the curricular activities and topics. Post-intervention surveys suggest that these experiences generate student interest exploring these ideas further and connections to areas of interest to students.
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This content will become publicly available on June 25, 2024
Engaging Students in Exploring Computer Hardware Fundamentals Using FPGA Board Games.
Electronic devices have become indispensable in everyone’s life and so the computer hardware industry is demanding skilled professionals to design and physically implement devices to satisfy the market. However, misconceptions surrounding manufacturing jobs and the increasing initiatives to motivate students with engineering majors to focus on software-related topics such as artificial intelligence and blockchain are hindering students’ interest in hardware computing. Our project, funded by the NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, addresses the need to engage more students in explorations (and, eventually, design) of computer hardware by developing a set of games played on an easy-to-use hardware platform to understand and implement the fundamental concepts that are essential to modern computing systems (Figure 1). To encourage flexible and broad adoption, the games are conceived as standalone units within a curriculum design that leverages equitable pedagogical practices, experiential learning, and inquiry-based learning to cultivate engineering identity and persistence using situational interest and self-efficacy theories.
We aim to offer the curriculum as an elective undergraduate course for all engineering majors at two US institutions and also research and evaluate the feasibility of implementing it as a summer program with high school students. Each module in the curriculum is divided into 5 phases: activation of prior knowledge, mini-lesson, gameplay, student-led work time, and debriefing. The games support collaboration rather than competition, and each lesson is tagged with equity spotlights, including Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (CSP) principles. Finally, informed by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, each lesson includes a teacher implementation guide and teacher educative materials to facilitate implementation (Figure 2).
We have tested the first two games in the curriculum for usability and feasibility with a group of high school students. The topics of these games include binary arithmetic and Boolean logic gates. Participants were challenged to solve tasks using the hardware tools at their disposal. This usability and feasibility testing study provided us with important design and implementation implications.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2142473
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10488603
- Publisher / Repository:
- 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Baltimore, MD
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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