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When designing learning environments and curricula for diverse populations, it is beneficial to connect with learners’ cultural knowledge, and the related interests, they bring to the learning context. To aid in the design and development of a computing curriculum and identify these areas of personal and cultural connection, we conducted a series of participatory design sessions. The goal of these sessions was to col- lect ideas around ways to make the instructional materials reflect the interests and voices of the learners. In this paper, we examine how the use of participatory design techniques can advance our understanding of the domains influencing today’s youth. Specifically, we examine the ideas generated by youth during these sessions as a means to understand what influences them and their ideas of cultural relevancy. In this work, we identify the resources children draw on across design activities and organize them to extend the Spheres of Influence framework (L. Archer et al., 2014). We identify seven spheres to attend to when designing for learning: Home and Family, School and Work, Hobbies and Leisure, Media, Interests, Peers, and Identity. 

In this paper, we present the Visuospatial Reasoning Environment for Experimentation (VREE). VREE provides a simulated environment where intelligent agents interact with virtual objects while solving different visuospatial reasoning tasks. This paper shows how VREE is valuable for studying the sufficiency of visual imagery approaches for a large number of visuospatial reasoning tasks as well as how diverse strategies can be represented and studied within a single task. We present results from computational experiments using VREE on the block design task and on numerous subtests from the Leiter-R test battery on nonverbal intelligence. 

A self-paced microcontroller activity was developed for a first-year college engineering course. Because the course is multidisciplinary and some students have no programming experience, scaffolding was included to allow individuals to create working code without knowledge of software-specific syntax. This approach, made possible by free drag-and-drop coding and open-source microcontroller programs, was intentionally designed to emphasize the logic and structure of coding, avoiding the common pitfall of syntax troubleshooting for novices. Student gains were made in knowledge of and confidence in microcontrollers and electronics over this five-day activity. 

A self-paced microcontroller activity was developed for a first-year college engineering course. Because the course is multidisciplinary and some students have no programming experience, scaffolding was included to allow individuals to create working code without knowledge of software-specific syntax. This approach, made possible by free drag-and-drop coding and open-source microcontroller programs, was intentionally designed to emphasize the logic and structure of coding, avoiding the common pitfall of syntax troubleshooting for novices. Student gains were made in knowledge of and confidence in microcontrollers and electronics over this five-day activity. 

The design of most learning environments focuses on supporting students in making, constructing, and putting together projects on and off the screen, with much less attention paid to the many issues—problems, bugs, or traps—that students invariably encounter along the way. In this symposium, we present different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives on understanding how learners engage in debugging applications on and off screen, examine learners’ mindsets about debugging from middle school to college students and teachers, and present pedagogical approaches that promote strategies for debugging problems, even having learners themselves design problems for others. We contend that learning to identify and fix problems—debug, troubleshoot, or get unstuck—in completing projects provides a productive space in which to explore multiple theoretical perspectives that can contribute to our understanding of learning and teaching critical strategies for dealing with challenges in learning activities and environments. 

The nature of dark matter and properties of neutrinos are among the most pressing issues in contemporary particle physics. The dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber is the leading technology to cover the available parameter space for weakly interacting massive particles, while featuring extensive sensitivity to many alternative dark matter candidates. These detectors can also study neutrinos through neutrinoless double-beta decay and through a variety of astrophysical sources. A next-generation xenon-based detector will therefore be a true multi-purpose observatory to significantly advance particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, solar physics, and cosmology. This review article presents the science cases for such a detector.