BPC-LSA: Training High School CS Teachers to Attract More & Diverse Students

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Virginia proposes to leverage and scale the Tapestry Workshops, a successful series of workshops for high school computer science teachers that includes training in both content and in methods for attracting and retaining women and minority students. After participating in this workshop, teachers report success in recruiting more students - particularly girls and minority students - to their classes. With this proposal, the Tapestry workshops will be scaled for national impact with a new workshop, Teachers Attract Girls to high school CS (TAG HSCS) that will train "trainers" to organize new Tapestry-type workshops in their own geographic regions. Specifically, the proposed effort will recruit organizers for train-the-trainer workshops to be held in conjunction with SIGCSE, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and the Regional Hopper Celebrations; it will create community among those organizers for sharing resources; it will replicate the Tapestry workshops around the country; and it will develop and distribute an NCWIT Program-in-a-Box for offering Tapestry-type workshops. The community of organizers will be sustained in part through attendance and sessions at the annual NCWIT meetings. The project will ensure workshop quality by reviewing and consulting on plans, providing tested content, and funding participants for the first implementations. Together these trainers and the teachers who participate in their workshops have the capacity to have a broad impact on the entry and early experiences of underrepresented students in computing.