Equitable Computer Science for All Learning Ecosystems: Developing Underserved Students' Computational Making Literacies Through Community-Embedded Out of School Time Programming

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

At its core, the National Science Foundation's CSforAll initiative has the goal of creating the infrastructure, pathways, and incentives that develop ecosystems for supporting and motivating all youth to become computationally literate and pursue computer science-related degrees and careers. This proposal makes a case for the extension of the CSforAll infrastructure to include the integration of out-of-school time (OST) learning projects into existing CSforAll funded grants by asking two questions: How can we foster a community learning environment that recognizes, supports, and promotes computational literacies as a desirable and accessible form of social capital by mentors, youth, and families? And how do these community-level connections impact youth computational making learning opportunities, participation, social networks, knowledge, and understanding? In Evanston, a partnership between Northwestern University, the district, and the Evanston YMCA will work together to understand and answer these questions by designing and operating a community-based computational making OST hub that provides the learning activities and peer community needed to create an inviting and relevant environment for students, caring adults, and educators to reorient their perception towards computer science-related careers as desirable and achievable for youth in the community. This proposal seeks to take advantage of a unique opportunity - the launch of a 1:1 middle grades tablet initiative in a racially and socioeconomically diverse community actively engaged in addressing their expanding achievement gap - to implement a community-based computational making OST hub and reimagine how a community-embedded approach to OST designed to support youth and caring adults (parents and mentors) can ignite youths' computational making participation. Specifically, this proposal seeks to create a learning community that uses the computational thinking guided design process to motivate and support students in the systemic creation of interactive objects that require the integration of coding, digital fabrication, and visual design literacies to produce aesthetically powerful and socially conscious solutions to student and community defined design challenges. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.