NSF Awards: 1649277
SF CALL (Computing for All Levels and Learners) has the mission to nurture equitable K-20 computer science career pathways within public education systems. SF CALL brings together a partnership of San Francisco State University, San Francisco Unified School District, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
At the K-12 level, CSME supports SF Unified School District in becoming the first large urban school district to implement a preK-12 CS curriculum in their CS for All initiative. CS faculty provide professional development workshops for district teachers, and pedagogical support for CS majors who serve as classroom assistants directly in district middle school CS classes. SFSU CS faculty also collaborate with district staff to develop the K-12 CS curriculum.
CSME also supports the development of CS coursework for in-service CS teachers so they can develop their knowledge and add a supplemental authorization to their credential in CS teaching.
At the transition from high school to college, the SFSU Metro Academies provide intensive mentoring for at-risk students in CS related majors at SFSU and City College of SF, the two most common colleges attended by SFUSD students.
In college, SFSU has developed innovative supplemental instruction workshops for difficult bottleneck CS courses. These workshops are taught by pairs of near-peers, successful upper-division students. This model has been proven to increase grades and student success. CS faculty are revising the pedagogy of these courses by infusing more problem-solving and design projects into the CS curriculum.
At the transition from college to industry, SFSU has partnered with the SF Chamber of Commerce and the South SF city government to develop industry internships for CS students.
NSF Awards: 1649277
SF CALL (Computing for All Levels and Learners) has the mission to nurture equitable K-20 computer science career pathways within public education systems. SF CALL brings together a partnership of San Francisco State University, San Francisco Unified School District, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
At the K-12 level, CSME supports SF Unified School District in becoming the first large urban school district to implement a preK-12 CS curriculum in their CS for All initiative. CS faculty provide professional development workshops for district teachers, and pedagogical support for CS majors who serve as classroom assistants directly in district middle school CS classes. SFSU CS faculty also collaborate with district staff to develop the K-12 CS curriculum.
CSME also supports the development of CS coursework for in-service CS teachers so they can develop their knowledge and add a supplemental authorization to their credential in CS teaching.
At the transition from high school to college, the SFSU Metro Academies provide intensive mentoring for at-risk students in CS related majors at SFSU and City College of SF, the two most common colleges attended by SFUSD students.
In college, SFSU has developed innovative supplemental instruction workshops for difficult bottleneck CS courses. These workshops are taught by pairs of near-peers, successful upper-division students. This model has been proven to increase grades and student success. CS faculty are revising the pedagogy of these courses by infusing more problem-solving and design projects into the CS curriculum.
At the transition from college to industry, SFSU has partnered with the SF Chamber of Commerce and the South SF city government to develop industry internships for CS students.
Continue the discussion of this presentation on the Multiplex. Go to Multiplex
Barbara Komlos
This project sounds great, especially that you have the chamber of commerce involved to help students get jobs upon graduation. Are you doing anything to look at the role of culture in your pedagogy or curricular content, especially since many of your students are URM?
Eric Hsu
Professor
Thanks for the encouragement! You bring up an important point, and one which I hope we can point some resources towards for better research.
We do believe that culturally relevant pedagogy is important for access and content richness, so secondary projects involve creating software of service to local communities. We also spend time in our summer PD workshops on culturally relevant pedagogy. In the future, I hope we can look carefully at how these efforts play out at the student level.
Jeanne Century
DIrector of Research & Evaluation and Research Associate Professor
Hi Eric -
It's great to see an effort that is working with an eye toward building a K-20 pathway. I'm curious to know whether the work funded by NSF emphasizes one level of the pathway over another? Or, is the work pretty evenly distributed across the different components?
I'm also interested to know what your criteria are for success? What kind of information are you collecting on outcomes?
Thanks!
Jeanne
Eric Hsu
Professor
Thanks for the kind words. The effort is fairly well distributed, with focus on K-8 since there isn't historically much curriculum there compared to 9-12, and college instruction/success.
The initial criteria is blunt: in K-12, how many students (and what distribution) have access to CS courses. In college, how many students pass CS related courses. In the future as the work progresses, we'll want to know how students progress from course to course, how their attitudes and motivation changes.
Eric Hsu
Professor
Public announcement: the video, by its brief nature, is vague about the outcomes from Year 1. A one-page poster with slightly more detail can be downloaded at http://betterfilecabinet.com/sfcall/SFSU-Poster-Hsu.pdf
Levi Patrick
Jeanne Century
DIrector of Research & Evaluation and Research Associate Professor
Thanks for posting the poster - it's very helpful. I'm working on developing a project now focused on internships. Could you give me a couple examples of the internships you have been able to put in place and the kinds of negotiations you made with the internship provider (like, how long they were, what kind of support the students got in the internship, were they paid, etc.). Thanks!
Eric Hsu
Professor
I'm asking after some of these details and will get back to you!
Levi Patrick
Assistant Executive Director
CS access has been a real conundrum for me as I think about the challenges the nation faces in finding teachers for existing math and science courses, let alone courses like CS that often are attempting to draw from a group of individuals who are gainfully employed in the coding/programming community. This challenge is compounded by the reality that the school day is already very full!
I wonder what thoughts you have about what schools and states can do to both increase access to CS in light of these challenges and also be mindful of the reduced number of course options high school students have as more and more disciplines try to claim their slice of the daily pie?
Eric Hsu
Professor
Some school districts have approached this by trying to integrate CS with other courses. SF Unified has emphasized stand-alone courses, with the challenge of fitting it into the day, but with the benefit of being able to do a thorough job on CS standards.
My own experience trying to integrate science and math to cover both Common Core and NGSS is that it's very tough in any lesson to cover both well, so while this kind of integration is very productive and fruitful, if it's stretched over an entire course, it's really tough to do justice to both.
My experience is that there's a lot of interest in CS electives due to its leading to employment in pretty high-status fields. In that situation the challenge is trying to encourage all populations to give CS a fair try (not just those predisposed by background and social pressures).
Jeanne Century
DIrector of Research & Evaluation and Research Associate Professor
Hi Eric - you described a big challenge that I know many talk about. What approaches have you tried out in the district to make CS more of an accessible opportunity for the youth who are walking by the door right now?
Eric Hsu
Professor
No magic bullet found yet!
First, the eventual goal is to have CS classes available in every school and exposure for all elementary students. This will expose more students compared to CS as pure electives.
Second, the K-6 curriculum uses languages like Scratch which are not usually known by students, even those who have access to computers at home, so there is a bit of leveling there.
Third, the programming tasks through G6 are about making games, something that hopefully is attractive to all students, and then starting in G7, there is a project strand around apps for social impact and giving back to community.
We are eager to learn about other approaches that others are pioneering!
Pablo Bendiksen
Research Assistant
Hey Eric,
Pablo here, MS Stats and Computer Science student.
I am impressed with the wide array of workshops and coursework targeting students at all levels of pre-collegiate education and beyond! The minimal CS exposure to youths, especially kids of color, is a central problem we address in my research lab as well.
I think it would be interesting to learn more about what levels of computational knowledge and thinking are appropriate for what grades; for example, do you think teaching the concept (and applications) of loops- something mentioned by a teacher during your video- is something you would consider to be right at the level of learning for sixth graders? Do you find a lot of variation in student understanding of such concepts within a grade level, or between demographics?
Eric Hsu
Professor
Hi Pablo, thanks for the comments. I've uploaded a more detailed summary of the CS curriculum from grade to grade. The curriculum follows the K12cs.org Framework for K-12 Computer Science Education and the Computer Science Teacher Association K-12 CS Standards.
http://betterfilecabinet.com/sfcall/SF_CALL_Cur...
I'm not a classroom teacher, so I can't give you a direct report, but yes I hear reported that there are extreme variations in previous computing experience and access, so differentiation is a tough task, as well as trying to keep status differences from detracting from the class. It helps that the curriculum is usually about material that no student has really used before (e.g. Scratch), but basic familiarity and experience with computers is still a big head start.
Pablo Bendiksen
Research Assistant
Thank you, Eric. I appreciate your thoughtful response. I looked at the CS curriculum and got a better idea of the goals expected of different grade levels. It is my hope to further align such goals with specific Computer Science topics when it comes to my lab and the work we do with middle school students.
I can imagine there's no such thing as an ideal homogeneity of student performance and, like you said, even basic familiarity with computers is still a big head start for kids relative to their peers. If you have anymore suggestions about structuring a CS oriented curriculum for middle school kids, in the context of a summer program, please do let me know.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.