Engaging in Computer Science

This research study was situated at the crossroads of three challenges currently facing computer science educators: (1) need for outreach programs and open-source activities as educators report being under-prepared to provide quality computer science education to meet the growing demand for computer science professionals; (2) need for outreach considerations that support continued learning and include instilling confidence and motivation, employing hands-on and student-centered activities, and promoting technical skills desirable by future employers; and (3) need for sensible learning experiences for diverse students that can be promoted through novel, cost-effective outreach activities.

These camps created many open-source activities with staged levels of difficulty (level-up guides) to provide a wide-range of educator resources for computer science classrooms. In addition, these activities are integrated with other subject-matters, connecting different lessons through common themes, although they are focused on cybersecurity. To support continued learning, high school students and collegiate camp staff were employed to create working relationships and give student participants the chance to work with others and engage in an array of complementary strengths. Additionally, unplugged activities gave students a platform for computational thinking and practice for formulating solutions beyond their current programming abilities. Finally, these outreach activities focused on novel approaches to real-world problems through cost-effective labs (i.e., Micro:bits) that educators can easily integrate into their existing curriculum.

Observational field notes were made to promote improvements for the summer camps. Then, the effectiveness of the outreach camps was assessed through the use of pre-camp and post-camp surveys. Finally, the field note observations and results were discussed in the context of the previous research, explicitly outlining the contribution to the field as well as implications and limitations. The camp surveys showed that outreach programs can positively impact student interest in cybersecurity, raising both awareness and curiosity for cybersecurity. The results indicated that the number of students who reported being highly interested in cybersecurity more than doubled from the start to the end of the camp. Furthermore, the results did not solely indicate that students who were already interested in cybersecurity became more interested; instead, all of the students who were only minimally interested in cybersecurity at the beginning of the camp reported being more interested after the camp. In addition, students showed increased awareness for the implications of their online behavior, recognizing the potential vulnerabilities associated with common online activities. Enforcing cyber-safe practices (e.g., being cognizant of sharing personal information) equips students to protect themselves in an advancing technological world. Lastly, these camp surveys indicated that the hands-on activities and student-centered labs were successful in teaching basic cybersecurity concepts. Specifically, students were able to identify breaches in confidentiality, integrity, and availability posed in real-world scenarios. Holistically, this research concludes that outreach programs centered around cybersecurity can have a positive impact on student perceptions through the use of hands-on labs and student-centered activities, teaching them the importance of cybersecurity and cultivating curiosity in exploring cybersecurity topics.

Based on the results of these three week-long camps, suggestions for educators include:

• Set the stage with baseline information in short (less than 20 minutes) of the topic;

• Connect the topic to the real-world and give explicit and varied examples;

• Have students create a real-world question (from the problem) to investigate;

• Allow students flexibility to change their questions as evidence is collected;

• Provide opportunities for students to practice and fail in a safe space and continue changing their question and collecting evidence;

• Encourage students to use the data collected and analyze it in different ways;

• Promote students' ideas for improving designs, data collection, and analysis;

• Provide a space for students to share outcomes, lessons learned, potential impacts on society, career connections to the work, applications to other fields, and more;

• Give students choices of topics and sample questions as well as non-examples if they get stuck;

• Promote student engagement by allowing students to find a place of connection with the computer science (or any other) work;

• When possible and appropriate, foster student engagement in real-world scenarios through connections with experts in the field (such as industry professionals;

• Provide computer science activities that rely on computational thinking rather than only programming and stress the importance of responsible code use (from shared libraries, code banks, and widespread tool-kits);

• Be explicit about the real-world implications of each activity to solidify learning and encourage trying again or trying differently when student failure occurs.

The authors are planning future student outreach activities and educator professional development opportunities for upcoming summers. Activities are extended and new activities will be introduced based on the collected field notes and survey results. The future camps reach out to new rural areas through in-person and virtual scenarios. In addition, new research studies could focus on current issues facing STEM fields and cybersecurity professionals, as well as current methods being used to provide outreach opportunities. Research into the industry might reveal new concepts and problems to pose to students, while the research into other outreach offerings might drive enhancements on the outreach logistics. Future research is needed concerning the current status of computer science, cybersecurity, and their relation to integrated STEM education, sustaining interest in STEM fields, and employing outreach programs like summer camps.