In 2020, over 116,000 students took the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) Exam. Although Black female students have participated in AP CSP at higher rates than for the AP CSA course, their representation is still disproportionately lower than the school population of Black females. In this Experience Report, we present the early results of an NSF-sponsored effort that provides an AP CSP preparatory experience and CS career awareness to Black female students from rural, urban, and suburban communities in the state of Alabama. At the project's core is a peer-learning

The increasing sophistication and availability of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technologies wield the potential to transform how we teach and learn computational concepts and coding. This project develops a platform for creative coding in virtual and augmented reality. The Embodied Coding Environment (ECE) is a flow-based visual coding system designed to increase physical engagement with programming and lower the barrier to entry for novice programmers. It is conceptualized as a merged digital/physical workspace where spatial representation of code, the visual outputs of the code, and

In the pre-pandemic world, it was estimated that 2.5 million children in the US were restricted to their homes due to medical risk. Sadly, in the COVID-19 (C-19) world and post C-19 world this number is expected to be much larger. As communities and schools return to in-person gatherings, many children will not be able to return to in-person school either due to their own health risks or the health risks of a family member. Awareness of this global reality highlights the urgent need to explore the use of inclusive technologies beyond the static screens of Zoom and online schools. As in-person

The JROTC program was established in 1916 and is a jointly funded program between the federal government and local school districts. The program’s goals include reducing the high school drop-out rate, improving school attendance and academic achievement, and preparing young people for careers in the military. With more than 500,000 participating students, JROTC is the largest youth training and development program in the United States. The character development education offered by the JROTC program is especially effective with at-risk youth and the program has higher-than average

While several introductory computer science curricula exist for children in K-8, there are few options that go beyond sequence, loops, and basic conditionals. The goal of this project is to not only fill this gap with a high-quality curriculum supported by complete instructional materials, but to also do so with an equity-balanced curriculum. That is, a curriculum that values advancing equity equally with student learning outcomes. In this paper, we intro- duce barriers to equity in public school classrooms, pedagogical approaches to culturally-relevant curricula, and how our Scratch Encore

Our modern technological age is witnessing the pervasive impact of technology on healthcare, transportation, education, commerce, and entertainment. Thus, there is great demand for a well-prepared STEM workforce. To address this need for a tech-savvy workforce, government, corporate, and education sectors are all focused on creating and offering innovative teaching, learning, and training opportunities for students at all levels. In this vein, our team has designed and conducted a summer robotics workshop to increase the robotics knowledge and technical and entrepreneurial skills of

Advances in science and technology are shaping every aspect of our lives including education, work, healthcare, transportation, commerce, and entertainment. This societal transformation has created an increasing demand for a workforce well-trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and representative of societal diversity. To meet this demand, the K-12 educational environment is witnessing a growing focus on engaging and exposing all students to advance technologies. However, creating technologically rich educational environments requires preparing teachers to

Over the last decade, with the ever-increasing demand of STEM majors for the job market and the introduction of Next Generation Science Standards, the need for introducing and integrating engineering practices within the K-12 curriculum has risen. Accordingly, professional development (PD) programs have been seeking to prepare teachers for incorporating various engineering practices into their curriculum. Several research studies have examined the effectiveness of PD programs by evaluating teacher knowledge, self-efficacy, and student learning outcomes about engineering practices. However

Youth residing in mountain tourist communities represent an important and underserved rural population. Science, engineering, and computing are hidden within the daily workforce practices in these communities, unlike large metropolitan areas where technology jobs are prominent in the local culture. Youth in rural communities may think that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers require them to leave their communities, which can disincentivize academic preparations [1, 2]. Youth career experiences through in-school and out-of-school programs are often general in nature

With the shortage of cybersecurity professionals, there is a critical need to train more young-generation cybersecurity professionals to fill the gap. In this work, we designed interactive activities that make abstract cybersecurity concepts more tangible by using exciting new mixed reality (MR) technology to teach cybersecurity skills and raise the potential interest in cybersecurity careers for middle school students. We plan to analyze the immersive experience, situational interest, and workload after the experiment to study the participants' learning performance and user experience.