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Attracting students to computing is crucial for advancing the development of new skills and fostering positive attitudes toward the field, especially among females and minoritized populations. One promising approach involves integrating computing with artistic activities, such as music. This study examines how learner’s prior experiences influence their participation in a virtual summer camp on coding with music. The study also examines how participation in the camp influences participants' attitudes about computing, with an eye toward gender differences. Data were collected through participant surveys (N=73) and focus groups (N=48). Findings suggest that parents’ and guardians' involvement is crucial for participation and integrating coding with artistic work holds promise for attracting students to the field. Findings can inform possible paths to engaging students in computing. 

Attracting students to computing is crucial for advancing the development of new skills and fostering positive attitudes toward the field, especially among females and minoritized populations. One promising approach involves integrating computing with artistic activities, such as music. This study examines how learner’s prior experiences influence their participation in a virtual summer camp on coding with music. The study also examines how participation in the camp influences participants' attitudes about computing, with an eye toward gender differences. Data were collected through participant surveys (N=73) and focus groups (N=48). Findings suggest that parents’ and guardians' involvement is crucial for participation and integrating coding with artistic work holds promise for attracting students to the field. Findings can inform possible paths to engaging students in computing. 

Attracting students to computing is crucial for advancing the development of new skills and fostering positive attitudes toward the field, especially among females and minoritized populations. One promising approach involves integrating computing with artistic activities, such as music. This study examines how learner’s prior experiences influence their participation in a virtual summer camp on coding with music. The study also examines how participation in the camp influences participants' attitudes about computing, with an eye toward gender differences. Data were collected through participant surveys (N=73) and focus groups (N=48). Findings suggest that parents’ and guardians' involvement is crucial for participation and integrating coding with artistic work holds promise for attracting students to the field. Findings can inform possible paths to engaging students in computing. 

Broadening interest in computer science is a major research goal of the 21st century. Many initiatives use traditional “hooks” to attract students, such as video games and robotics. Unfortunately, this tends to attract only those already interested in computer science. One alternative domain gaining momentum in computer science education research is music, which is showing interesting results with participants that have previous music knowledge. This paper presents a case study of teaching computer programming with music, in Brazil, to students with limited formal music experience. Through data collected in surveys, focus groups, and researchers’ observations, we show that in this context students can still learn and thrive as musical programmers. 

The demand for qualifed computing professionals is high, with thousands of positions remaining unflled each year. To create more qualifed professionals, initiatives to attract and engage students in computer science have been proposed, but they tend to concentrate on primary, secondary (K-12), and post-secondary (college) levels. With many adults looking for better career opportunities, it is sur- prising that few computer science initiatives focus on attracting adult learners to the feld. This paper presents the results of an infor- mal computer programming course that teaches the foundational concepts of computer programming to adults as they program hip- hop beats. This course is designed to attract adult learners that otherwise might have never considered computer programming, building their confdence and skills. We conducted this course on- line, two nights a week, for fve weeks, for about 40 participants. Afterward, we conducted a qualitative analysis of written survey data. We found that the adult learners’ perception of computer programming changed during the course, with many participants planning their next step in computing education. 

Broadening participation in computer science has been widely stud- ied, creating many diferent techniques to attract, motivate, and engage students. A common meta-strategy is to use an outside do- main as a hook, using the concepts in that domain to teach computer science. These domains are selected to interest the student, but stu- dents often lack a strong background in these domains. Therefore, a strategy designed to increase students’ interest, motivation, and engagement could actually create more barriers for students, who now are faced with learning two new topics. To reduce this poten- tial barrier in the domain of music, this paper presents the use of automated, immediate feedback during programming activities at a summer camp that uses music to teach foundational programming concepts. The feedback guides students musically, correcting notes that are out-of-key or rhythmic phrases that are too long or short, allowing students to focus their learning on the computer science concepts. This paper compares the correctness of students that re- ceived automated feedback with students that did not, which shows the efectiveness of the feedback. Follow up focus groups with stu- dents confrmed this quantitative data, with students claiming that the feedback was not only useful but that the activities would be much more challenging without the feedback. 

Researchers and practitioners have demonstrated various benefits of introducing computational thinking (CT) through music com- position coding. While researchers have studied the impacts on participant attitudes towards CT and their learning of CT concepts, more case studies are needed on both learning CT concepts as well as CT practices, i.e., the processes of constructing music coding projects. This paper presents a case study of middle schoolers in an informal learning environment focused on integrating music composition with coding in TunePad. Specifically, we collected and analyzed logs of coding events, final code products, and surveys to explore both CT concept use and CT practices exhibited by the par- ticipants as they completed open-ended music coding activities to create their own melodies with specific music and CT requirements and recommendations