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 10, 2025
A New Approach to High School Data Science: Set Theory and Logic
Abstract: There is a consensus to introduce data science to secondary schools. However, data
science is interdisciplinary in nature and not easy to teach in K−12 settings. We proposed a new
approach to integrate mathematics, statistics, and programming—the foundations of data
science—for high school students based on set theory and logic. We developed an 8-week data
science foundation course and implemented it in a public high school. We conducted semistructured group interviews to collect students’ feedback on the course and the new approach.
Students thought the approach could well connect the topics and helped them learn the
interdisciplinary content.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2201393
- PAR ID:
- 10519448
- Publisher / Repository:
- International Society of the Learning Sciences
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 979-8-9906980-0-0
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2101 to 2102
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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