| NSF Org: |
DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | May 31, 2011 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 6, 2016 |
| Award Number: | 1031351 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Chia Shen
cshen@nsf.gov (703)292-8447 DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | June 1, 2011 |
| End Date: | May 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $2,005,339.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $2,005,339.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2012 = $387,741.00 FY 2013 = $422,870.00 FY 2014 = $778,182.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2200 W MAIN ST DURHAM NC US 27705-4640 (919)684-3030 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2200 W MAIN ST DURHAM NC US 27705-4640 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | ITEST-Inov Tech Exp Stu & Teac |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
US college and universities are experiencing a dramatic decline in enrollment of computing majors, despite a predicted, rapid increase in future jobs in the computer science (CS) and information technology (IT) sectors. This reflects a decline in the number of students taking the AP computer science exam. To address this issue, this project will build statewide networks of college, middle school, and high school faculty who will offer workshops and provide continuing support during the academic year.
The networks will be set up in three different states (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Mississippi). College and university faculty will work directly with middle school and high school teachers in teaching and learning innovative and effective ways of introducing computing and computer programming, and in incorporating computational thinking into other disciplines. This project scales up a previous, successful collaborative project for students and teachers using the Alice 3D programming environment. The approach focuses on a strong core of fundamental programming concepts and problem-solving techniques in an object-oriented, interactive environment. The project's external evaluation will include the collection of qualitative and quantitative data on teacher instruction and students' enrollment and performance.
The project will train approximately 265 teachers directly, and provide support for master teachers to provide subsequent training for other teachers in their home districts. This project has the potential to increase the amount and effectiveness of instruction in object-oriented programming concepts and problem-solving to a large number of middle school and high school students. By training middle school and high school teachers in the proposed approach, and by providing support networks and building community, the project should be able to impact students throughout three states. Developed curricular materials will be stored in an online, searchable database to be freely available to all teachers. In making computing, computer science, programming, and computational thinking more attractive to middle school and high school students, the project team expects to encourage more students to major in STEM, and particularly computing, at the college level.
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.
Computing is a new field that in the past few years, has become one of the
largest majors at many institutions. Its importance and popularity have
come about as technology is increasingly intertwining with our daily lives,
and predictions are indicating a shortage of technology workers in the
future.
However, K-12 education has been slow in incorporating computer science
into all grade levels. One of the reasons why is that schools have
"technology" or "digital media" courses. These typically teach keyboarding
lessons and how to use software tools, such as word processor or
spreadsheets. That is not computer science! Computer science is about using
computational techniques to solve problems, especially problems that would
be too difficult to solve with pencil and paper. Because of misconceptions
between technology and computer science, schools have been slow to
incorporate computer science into their curriculum.
Our project is called Adventures with Alice Programming. Since 2007 with an
ITEST grant followed by this ITEST Scale up grant, we have provided annual
professional development to K-12 teachers to learn programming, and to
guide them in creating lesson plans that integrate computing into their
discipline. The Alice programming language is a free programming
environment for novices to learn programming by creating animations of 3-D
objects in a virtual world. Alice was created by Randy Pausch at CMU.
Our major activity is providing professional development to teachers to
learn programming and to guide them in creating lesson plans. We have
sites in the states of North Carolina (NC), South Carolina (SC), California
(CA) and Nebraska (NE). These sites run professional development workshops
on Alice for middle school/high school teachers. The NC and SC workshops
have run beginner workshops since summer 2011 and followup workshops every
summer since 2012. The CA site ran workshops in summer 2014 and 2015. The
Nebraska workshop started running workshops in summer 2016. The NC
workshops are held at Duke University, the SC workshops at the College of
Charleston and Columbia College, the CA workshops in the San Francisco/San
Jose area, and the NE workshops in Lincoln, Nebraska.
All our professional development workshops are residential two-week
workshops. In the first week, teachers learn fundamental programming by
building Alice programs. During the second week, teachers develop lesson
plans in their discipline. The following summer, teachers attend a followup
workshop where teachers present material they have developed or student
work, and we provide some instruction or updates to Alice.
We have also organized four large Alice Symposia at Duke University since
2006 to build community, with two of the symposia as part of this grant.
Beginner and followup workshops are held at the same time so beginners can
learn from the followup teachers, and the followup teachers can present in
a larger venue. We also schedule other short workshops around the Symposium
for followup teachers to gain new knowledge. The Third Alice Symposium took
place on June 19, 2013. The program included a Keynote by Tiffany Barnes
from NCSU, papers, posters, invited speakers and an Alice contest for
students. We organized six workshops on Alice or related topics in
conjunction with the Symposium. The Symposium and workshops were attended
by over 120 participants. The fourth Alice Symposium was held on June 20,
2017. The program included a Keynote by Thomas Price from NCSU, five
invited talks, and teacher demos. A Workshop on Alice 2 to Alice 3 was
held the next day, organized by Wanda Dann and Don Slater. There were 81
attendees at the Alice Symposium and 28 people attended the Alice 2 to
Alice 3 Workshop.
Our findings indicate that our summer professional development workshops
were both positive and productive for participants. Those teachers
participating in our study indicated that workshops helped them to increase
their knowledge, skills, and abilities with Alice. Those respondents
demonstrated learning effective instructional strategies for translating
the information to their classrooms. For all the sites, the participants
increased their content knowledge using Alice, as evidenced by significant
gains on content assessments. Complementing these increases in knowledge,
respondents provided praise for instructors and sessions, rating them as
valuable and worthwhile in developing their pedagogical skill with using
Alice in their own classroom lessons.
The programming language Alice has been introduced by teachers attending
our workshops to over 10,000 students. We have presented Alice at
conferences from NC to Beijing, and we have used Alice in outreach
activities. The free curriculum materials we have developed are on our web
page. Google analytics on our website shows from Sept 2012 to Sept 14,
2018 that we have had over 50,700 users, over 66,800 sessions and over
88,000 page views at our website, with 80% of the traffic in the United
States. We have been contacted by teachers all over the United States who
said they are using our curriculum materials.
Last Modified: 10/08/2018
Modified by: Susan H Rodger
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