CS 10K: Mobile CSP: Using Mobile Learning to Teach CS Principles in Connecticut Schools

Trinity College, Hartford CT

Investigators

Abstract

Trinity College, in partnership with the Hartford Public School System, the Connecticut Chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association, and other Hartford area high schools, will train approximately 30 Connecticut high school teachers to teach Advanced Placement (AP) computing courses in Connecticut high schools that currently do not teach AP computer science. The course will be based on a mobile Computer Science Principles curriculum, Mobile CSP, which uses the new mobile computing language, App Inventor for Android, to provide a rigorous, programming-based introduction to computational thinking. The main research question addressed is whether the Mobile CSP curriculum is an effective way to teach CS Principles and whether it can serve as one model to help train teachers for the CS 10K project. The curriculum is project-based and takes a constructionist approach to learning computing -- i.e., students learn through constructing their own artifacts and mental models. Student projects will focus on building socially useful, place-based mobile apps using the App Inventor programming language. In this way, student learning will be associated closely with their interests and grounded in their schools, their homes, and their communities. The curriculum, which was developed and tested at Trinity College and the Greater Hartford Academy of Mathematics and Science (GHAMAS) as one of the Phase 2 pilot courses for the College Board's CS Principles project, will be carefully evaluated along several dimensions, including its efficacy at improving programming and problem solving skills and its impact on student and teacher attitudes toward computer science education. The Mobile CSP project has three main goals: (i) To develop a rigorous computer science principles AP curriculum based on mobile computing; (ii) to teach it to Connecticut teachers in 6-week summer workshops; and (iii) to support participating teachers in their effort to implement the AP pilot courses in Connecticut schools that do not currently teach AP computer science. The 2013-2014 cohort of teachers will be drawn primarily from the Hartford school district, a district whose students come mostly from demographic and socio-economic backgrounds that have been underrepresented in computer science. In years two and three the project will expand to other, similarly situated, Connecticut cities and towns.