Broadening student enthusiasm for computer science with a great insights course

desJardins, Marie; Littman, Michael L.

doi:10.1145/1734263.1734317

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…For teachers, teaching material is particularly interesting if it can be used to fulfill curriculum requirements easily. For example, the STEM subjects in high schools require that 10th grade students "[...] develop systems in increasingly complex contexts and [...] know about the dynamics and interactions in these systems" [14].…”

Section: Simulated Worlds-events For Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Expanding HLRS Academic HPC Simulation Training Programs to More Target Groups

Döpper¹,

Bärbel²,

Lindner³

et al. 2021

JOCSE

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For a long time, high-performance computers and simulations were of interest only at universities and research institutes. In recent years, however, their application and relevance in a wider field has grown; not only do industry and small and medium-sized businesses benefit from these technologies, but their social and political impacts are also increasing significantly. Therefore, there is an increasing need for experts in this field as well as better understanding of the importance of high-performance computing (HPC) and simulations among the general public. For this reason, the German National Supercomputing Center HLRS has broadened its academic training program to include courses for students and teachers as well as for professionals. Specifically, this expansion involves two projects: "Simulated Worlds," which offers a variety of educational programs for middle and high school students, and the "MoeWE" project with its "Supercomputing Academy" for professionals. These projects complement the center's academic educational focus by addressing the special needs of these new target groups who have otherwise not been able to benefit from HLRS' academic training program. In this paper, we present background concepts, programmatic offerings, and exemplary content of the two projects; discuss the experiences involved in their development and implementation; and provide insights that may be useful for improving education and training in this area.

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Section: Simulated Worlds-events For Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Germany, the School of Advanced Professional Studies (SAPS) 13 at the University of Ulm and at the Ulm University of Technology has built a tiered online continuing education program for SMEs as part of its "Data Literacy and Data Science" program, and the Hasso Plattner Institute offers free MOOCs and discussion forums on openHPI 14 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding HLRS Academic HPC Simulation Training Programs to More Target Groups

Döpper¹,

Bärbel²,

Lindner³

et al. 2021

JOCSE

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“…At the college level, educators have developed a number of curricular approaches to level the playing field for students with less pre-college experience. Several universities have introduced a separate introductory course or track specifically to allow students with less pre-college experience to catch up [4,11,15]. A complementary approach uses curriculum that will not disadvantage students with no experience in introductory courses.…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

The persistent effect of pre-college computing experience on college CS course grades

2018

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Many college computer science majors have little or no pre-college computing experience. Previous work has shown that inexperienced students under-perform their experienced peers when placed in the same introductory courses and are more likely to drop out of the CS program. However, not much is known about what, if any, differences may persist beyond the introductory sequence for students who remain in the program. We conducted a study across all levels of a CS program at a large public university in the United States to determine whether grade differences exist between students with and without pre-college experience, and if so, for what types of experiences. We find significant grade differences in courses at all levels of the program. We further find that students who took AP Computer Science receive significantly higher average grades---by up to a half grade---in nearly all courses we studied. Pre-college experience appears to have a weaker relationship with retention and with low-stakes assessment grades. We discuss the limitations of these findings and implications for high school and college level CS courses and programs.

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“…Yet in many academic game projects, students still write the core game loop and low-level simulation code. desJardins and Littman note that too much programming decreases the appeal of a project to non-majors [4]. Particularly in projects that entice students to study CS, every line of code should directly correlate to an observable output.…”

Section: Industrial Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading mobile games throughout the curriculum

Bayzick

Askins

Kalafut

et al. 2013

Proceeding of the 44th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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We introduce ALE, a new framework for writing games for the Android platform. The primary motivation behind ALE is to emphasize reading code before writing it. Beginners read game code to learn how levels can be made, and advanced users read the code of ALE itself to learn how to create useful and extensible libraries. To date, roughly 200 students at our university have used ALE, ranging from first-semester engineering undergraduates through Masters students. ALE has proven useful in teaching non-majors about CS, in making introductory CS programming courses more exciting, and in encouraging creativity, entrepreneurship, and good program design in upper-level electives. Based on these experiences, we encourage educators at all levels to consider using ALE to improve students' ability to learn by reading code.

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Broadening student enthusiasm for computer science with a great insights course

Cited by 15 publications

References 11 publications

Expanding HLRS Academic HPC Simulation Training Programs to More Target Groups

Expanding HLRS Academic HPC Simulation Training Programs to More Target Groups

The persistent effect of pre-college computing experience on college CS course grades

Reading mobile games throughout the curriculum

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