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INSPIRED High School Computing Academies

Published: 01 July 2011 Publication History

Abstract

If we are to attract more women and minorities to computing we must engage students at an early age. As part of its mission to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing, the Increasing Student Participation in Research Development Program (INSPIRED) conducts computing academies for high school students. The academies are designed to increase students’ knowledge of and interest in computing and to encourage females and minorities to participate in computing. INSPIRED academies differ from others in several ways. They are relatively easy to organize and require relatively few resources; they focus on computing concepts and object-oriented programming; they expose students to successful female and minority computer scientists; and they actively engage university students from underrepresented groups to organize, coordinate, teach, and help assess the academies. This not only provides role models for the high school students but also helps engage the university students and promote their professional development. Our assessment results show that high school student participants have gained significant knowledge and interest in computing through participation in the academies. This article describes the organization, coordination, content, and assessment of the academies, along with suggestions for those who would like to design academies like these. It also discusses how to prepare university students for their roles in the academies and how their participation has helped in their professional development. It includes pointers to sites from which the instructional and assessment materials can be downloaded for those who wish to replicate or adapt these materials.

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Cited By

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  • (2021)Re-Examining Inequalities in Computer Science Participation from a Bourdieusian Sociological PerspectiveProceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/3446871.3469763(379-392)Online publication date: 16-Aug-2021
  • (2020)Light-weight student-driven workshops for positive attitude change towards programming in early collegeJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3417626.341763235:7(61-73)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
  • (2019)Identifying Pathways to Computer ScienceACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/328307019:3(1-30)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2019
  • Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computing Education
ACM Transactions on Computing Education  Volume 11, Issue 2
July 2011
111 pages
EISSN:1946-6226
DOI:10.1145/1993069
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 2011
Accepted: 01 November 2010
Revised: 01 July 2010
Received: 01 January 2010
Published in TOCE Volume 11, Issue 2

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Author Tags

  1. Computing
  2. academy
  3. broadening participation
  4. camp
  5. diversity
  6. gender
  7. high school camp
  8. minority
  9. outreach
  10. recruiting
  11. summer academy
  12. summer camp
  13. underrepresented

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Re-Examining Inequalities in Computer Science Participation from a Bourdieusian Sociological PerspectiveProceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/3446871.3469763(379-392)Online publication date: 16-Aug-2021
  • (2020)Light-weight student-driven workshops for positive attitude change towards programming in early collegeJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3417626.341763235:7(61-73)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
  • (2019)Identifying Pathways to Computer ScienceACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/328307019:3(1-30)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2019
  • (2015)Work in ProgressProceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/2808006.2808043(101-101)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2015
  • (2015)Does Outreach Impact Choices of Major for Underrepresented Undergraduate Students?Proceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference on International Computing Education Research10.1145/2787622.2787711(71-80)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2015
  • (2015)Recruiting, retaining and transitioning computing undergraduates the STAIRSTEP wayProceedings of the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2015.7344205(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2015
  • (2012)An INSPIRED game programming academy for high school studentsProceedings of the 2012 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2012.6462240(1-6)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2012

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