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  1. null (Ed.)
    In response to the need to broaden participation in computer science, we designed a summer camp to teach middle-school-aged youth to code apps with MIT App Inventor. For the past four summers, we have observed significant gains in youth's interest and self-efficacy in computer science, after attending our camps. The majority of these youth, however, were youth from our local community. To provide equal access across the state and secure more diversity, we were interested in examining the effect of the camp on a broader population of youth. Thus, we partnered with an outreach program to reach and test our camps on youth from low-income high-poverty areas in the Intermountain West. During the summer of 2019, we conducted two sets of camps: locally advertised app camps that attracted youth from our local community and a second set of camps as part of a larger outreach program for youth from low-income high-poverty areas. The camps for both populations followed the same design of personnel, camp activities, structure, and curriculum. However, the background of the participants was slightly different. Using survey data, we found that the local sample experienced significant gains in both self-efficacy and interest, while the outreach group only reported significant gains in self-efficacy after attending the camp. However, the qualitative data collected from the outreach participants indicated that they had a positive experience both with the camp and their mentors. In this article, we discuss the camp design and findings in relation to strategies for broadening participation in Computer Science education. 
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  2. null (Ed.)
    Our work is situated in research on Computer Science (CS) learning in informal learning environments and literature on the factors that influence girls to enter CS. In this article, we outline design choices around the creation of a summer programming camp for middle school youth. In addition, we describe a near-peer mentoring model we used that was influenced by Bandura's self-efficacy theory. The purpose of this article, apart from promoting transparency of program design, was to evaluate the effectiveness of our camp design in terms of increasing youths’ interest, self-efficacy beliefs, and perceptions of parental support. We found significant gains for all three of these concepts. Additionally, we make connections between our design choices (e.g., videos, peer support, mentor support) and the affective gains by thematically analyzing interview data concerning the outcomes found in our camps. 
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  3. Parental support is a predictor of children’s career interest and aspirations. However, mother and father support affects youth ca- reer choices differently. To understand how perceived mothers’ and fathers’ support affect career interest in computer science (CS), we developed two path models using both mother and father sup- port gains to predict youths’ interest in CS. We hypothesized that perceived father’s and mother’s support would relate to youths’ interest in CS via youths’ perception of CS utility value as a media- tor. We found that both mother and father support leads to interest in CS. However, father support was found to affect CS interest via the mediator utility-value beliefs. To provide explanations for these differences we used student interview data to explore how participants in our study perceived parental support. 
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  4. In response to the national demand to increase participation in CS, we argue that youth’s interest in computer science (CS) can be sparked by providing them with role models who are relatable and who resonate with their identities. To that end, we developed a mentoring model in which we train high schoolers to be near-peer mentors for middle schoolers learning to program in summer camps. In this paper, we present results from a mixed-methods study where we examined the relationship between mentor relatability and middle school campers’ self-efficacy and interest in CS. Pre- and post-surveys were used to measure campers’ affective outcomes around computing and mentor relatability. In addition, interviews and observations were used to illustrate the mechanisms that led to change in affect. Our findings suggest that mentor relatability is a significant predictor of campers’ self-efficacy and interest in CS. Results from the qualitative data further exemplify how mentor relatability was perceived and manifested in the camps. 
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