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To engage diverse populations of students who may not self-select into computing courses, a curriculum for a middle school music technology + computer science course that addresses learning standards for both subjects was developed and deployed. Students who engage with the curriculum learn modern music production techniques and computational thinking concepts. This is through a mix of traditional approaches to music technology education (digital audio workstations) and computational approaches via a culturally relevant learning platform that introduces students to coding through music production and remixing. This poster reflects on the last two years of curriculum design and deployment, teacher training, and student and educator engagement and feedback to provide insight into the teaching (and learning) of computational thinking in the music technology classroom. 

Evidence-centered design (ECD) is an assessment framework tailored to provide structure and rigor to the assessment development process, and also to generate evidence of assessment validity by tightly coupling assessment tasks with focal knowledge, skills, and abilities (FKSAs). This framework is particularly well-suited to FKSAs that are complex and multi-part (Mislevy and Haertel, 2006), as is the case with much of the focal content within the computer science (CS) domain. This paper presents an applied case of ECD used to guide assessment development in the context of a redesigned introductory CS curriculum. In order to measure student learning of CS skills and content taught through the curriculum, knowledge assessments were written and piloted. The use of ECD provided an organizational framework for assessment development efforts, offering assessment developers a clear set of steps with accompanying documentation and decision points, as well as providing robust validity evidence for the assessment. The description of an application of ECD for assessment development within the context of an introductory CS course illustrates its utility and effectiveness, and also provides a guide for researchers carrying out related work.