Award Abstract # 1441075
Bringing a Rigorous Computer Science Principles Course to the Largest School System in the United States

NSF Org: DRL
Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
Recipient: EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER, INC.
Initial Amendment Date: August 23, 2014
Latest Amendment Date: February 3, 2021
Award Number: 1441075
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Kathleen Bergin
DRL
 Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL)
EDU
 Directorate for STEM Education
Start Date: January 1, 2015
End Date: December 31, 2021 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $6,374,918.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $7,874,876.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2014 = $5,408,737.00
FY 2016 = $1,569,617.00

FY 2017 = $896,522.00
History of Investigator:
  • E. Paul Goldenberg (Principal Investigator)
    pgoldenberg@edc.org
  • June Mark (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Leigh DeLyser (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Brian Harvey (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Tunisia Mitchell (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Evan Korth (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Don Miller (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Aankit Patel (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Education Development Center
300 5TH AVE STE 2010
WALTHAM
MA  US  02451-8778
(617)618-2227
Sponsor Congressional District: 05
Primary Place of Performance: New York City Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York
NY  US  10007-1243
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
10
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): WWH4L4GKKW58
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): STEM + Computing (STEM+C) Part,
Special Projects - CNS,
STEM - Computing Partnerships,
Computing Ed for 21st Century
Primary Program Source: 01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

04001415DB NSF Education & Human Resource

04001617DB NSF Education & Human Resource

04001718DB NSF Education & Human Resource
Program Reference Code(s): 023Z, 7578, 9177, SMET
Program Element Code(s): 005Y00, 171400, 199600, 738200
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.076

ABSTRACT

This project involves a partnership between the Education Development Center, the University of California-Berkeley, the New York City Foundation for Computer Science, and the New York City Department of Education. The project team will develop curricular materials, based on the Beauty and Joy of Computing course developed at University of California-Berkeley, for teaching Computer Science Principles at the high school level using the Snap! programming language. They will run in-person teacher-training programs each summer, and develop an online teacher development course. During the project, 100 high school teachers in New York City will be trained to teach this course, and early participants will also become teacher-trainers who will work with later participants. The teachers involved will become part of a Community of Practice that will continue to provide support for the teacher cohorts.

This project is a design and development study. The central research hypothesis is that the explanatory power of a visual programming language can make advanced techniques such as recursion and higher order functions accessible to high school students, including traditionally underrepresented groups. The project team also hopes to show that students completing this Computer Science (CS) Principles course will be motivated and well prepared to succeed in later courses, such as the Advanced Placement (AP) CS A course. They will use the knowledge gained from this experience in New York City (NYC) to improve the course through iterative development and refinement and to increase understanding of the implementation of these ideas in high school contexts more broadly. Formative data will be collected throughout the project and analyzed, and used to inform subsequent revisions to the curriculum materials. They will use qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods analysis approaches. Over the four years of the project, the project team will work with the 100 teachers who will participate in the project, attend professional development activities, and teach the CS Principles course to a total of approximately 2,000 students in NYC. Evaluation instruments will include background surveys, feedback surveys, course assessments, the AP CS Principles exam (currently under development by the College Board), classroom observations, student interest and engagement assessments, student papers, and teacher interviews. All 100 NYC teachers involved will be part of the research study.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Alexandra Milliken, Christa Cody, Veronica Catete, and Tiffany Barnes "Effective Computer Science Teacher Professional Development: Beauty and Joy of Computing 2018" Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education , 2019 , p.271 10.1145/3304221.3319779
Goldenberg, E.Paul "Teaching children to be problem posers and puzzle-creators in mathematics" Proceedings of Constructionism 2018 , 2018 Citation Details
Goldenberg, E.P., Mark, J., Cuoco, A., and M. Fries. "Design Principles behind the Beauty and Joy of Computing Curriculum." SIGCSE 2019 , 2019
June Mark and Kelsey Klein "Beauty and Joy of Computing: 2016-17 Findings from an AP CS Principles course" Proceedings of the 50th ACMTechnical Symposium on Computer Science Education , 2019 , p.627 10.1145/3287324.3287375
June Mark and Kelsey Klein "Beauty and Joy of Computing: 201617 Findings from an AP CS Principles Course" Proceedings of the 50th ACMTechnical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Minneapolis, Minnesota USA, February 27-March 2, 2019 (SIGCSE19), ACM, NY, NY USA , 2019 , p.627 DOI: 10.1145/3287324.3287375
June Mark, Julie Zeringue, Kelsey Klein, Tunisia Mitchell, and José Olivares "Why do Students Enroll in AP CSP?" 2021 Conference on Research in Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT) , 2021 , p.1 doi: 10.1109/RESPECT51740.2021.9620546
Mark, June and Zeringue, Julie Koehler and Klein, K. and Mitchell, Tunisia and Olivares, José A. "Why Do Students Enroll in AP CSP?" RESPECT 2021 Conference Proceedings , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/RESPECT51740.2021.9620546 Citation Details
Paul Goldenberg "Problem-Posing and Creativity in Elementary School Mathematics" Constructivist Foundations , v.14 , 2019 , p.319 https://constructivist.info/14/3/319
Paul Goldenberg, June Mark, Brian Harvey, Al Cuoco, and Mary Fries "Design Principles behind Beauty and Joy of Computing" The 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE20), March 1114, 2020, Portland, OR, USA. , 2020 , p.220 https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366794
Paul Goldenberg, June Mark, Brian Harvey, Al Cuoco, Mary Fries "Design principles behind Beauty and Joy of Computing, an AP CSP" SIGCSE , 2020

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

Inviting young people into the world of computer science (CS)---a world with opportunities for both creativity and earning power---requires that they see themselves as creators not just consumers of content and code, and that they feel capable and welcome in the field. The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) curriculum---a key outcome of this project---exceeds the requirements of the College Board AP CSP course, and shows students that they can do and enjoy computer science creatively

The BJC partnership's goal was to broaden participation of high school students in CS, with a specific emphasis on increasing participation of girls, and Black and Latinx students. To achieve this, the partnership included a large, diverse school district (NYC) to implement, support, and scale a program designed to entice students, provide them with greater access to strong CS content, and prepare them for further engagement in the field. The partners included Education Development Center (EDC); University of California, Berkeley (UCB); the New York City Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Readiness (NYCDOE); and the New York Foundation for Computer Science Education (CSNYC, now CSforALL), with support from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Haynie Research and Evaluation (HRE).

We focused our curricular efforts on creating a coherent storyline through the AP CSP standards; engaging a diverse audience of students; developing extensive teacher and school supports; supporting students in taking and passing the AP exam; and most importantly, providing activities to inspire students and help them feel confident that they can pursue studies and careers in CS. The focus throughout is on direct engagement, experiencing CS. For example, in the first few days of the course students create a game; a "gossip" program that generates novel sentences according to student-specified rules; and original art at their creative specification. BJC uses the powerful visual programming language Snap! to prioritize logic and fundamental CS concepts over syntax and semi-colons. Regular student-led discussions on "Computing in the News" help bring attention to the social implications of computing, as do many lab assignments.

Through our NYC-based research, we tested and refined school-based efforts at recruitment and teaching, with promising results. Between 2015 and 2022, we provided BJC curriculum training to over 200 NYC teachers from 136 schools. Those teachers, in turn, served over 25,000 NYC high school students. Hundreds of additional teachers were trained nationally through NCSU. Field tests showed that teachers using the BJC curriculum and participating in our summer PD made measurable and statistically significant gains in content knowledge, self-efficacy, preparation, and self-rated programming ability, and student results also show significant gains in content knowledge. Pass rates for students taking the AP CSP exam were comparable to nationwide pass rates, with higher percentages of girls, and Black and Latinx students in NYC taking the AP CSP exam than nationwide (Mark & Klein, 2019). Recent (2021) national AP CSP exam data indicated female BJC students passed at a rate of 6.4 percentage points higher than the national average, Black BJC students passed at 1.2 points higher, and Hispanic BJC students at 4.6 points higher than the national average.

Successful curriculum crafting and school implementation required close attention to teachers and students: preparing teachers, listening closely to what supports they wanted, putting in place systems to sustain those supports, and building other systemic practices including teacher-to-teacher support and support for school and district administrators. We are sharing our knowledge gained through conference presentations and papers including Design Principles behind Beauty and Joy of Computing (Goldenberg et al., 2020) and other publications (e.g. Mark and Klein, 2019; Mark et al., 2021). Some of our learning is illustrated directly in our materials: the resources for teachers, developed in close collaboration with them; and the format and display of the student materials, informed by watching where they focused, where they lost track, how they switched between the curriculum and the programming environment (https://bjc.edc.org/). 

One additional key lesson learned from the implementation of BJC in NYC is that engaging teachers in and improving on an innovative curriculum can not only increase teacher knowledge and implementation but also contribute to the building of a strong professional learning community of educators, creating leadership opportunities for teachers who want to do and learn more, and supporting equitable growth of CS in participating schools. Results of this project include an AP CSP curriculum fully endorsed by the College Board, scaling and sustainable support for the BJC curriculum in NYC, an infrastructure for providing ongoing BJC professional development nationwide, a robust teacher learning community, and disseminated knowledge about the design and implementation of an AP CSP course as well as research on teacher and student outcomes.


Last Modified: 03/28/2022
Modified by: June Mark

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