NSF CP (Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education) Grant: The team’s goal with this grant is to develop pathways for undergraduate education majors to become computationally literate teachers, which will allow for more pathways for students to become computer science teachers. As part of this grant, the team developed two computational modules that are incorporated into core education courses: Learning and Motivation and Introduction to Education Technology.

Methods Course: Yadav and Korb also developed and taught a course called Methods of Teaching Computer Science. The team presented the course in person and online. Students who enter this course have strong CS content knowledge, but lack experience teaching CS to students. The goal of this course is to prepare pre-service teachers to teach high school CS courses. As of May 2013, three students completed this methods course and but one student completed the program and is currently teaching.

For more on this methods course, view this article.

Yadav speaks about the methods course:

So now the question becomes how do you teach this to somebody else? So the first part of the course we specifically talk about different types of approaches, for example, problem-based learning, peer programming, and all those things. And then, in the middle of the course, we focus on...so for example, we take loops and arrays. So how do you teach loops and arrays? So we take readings that specifically talk about loops and arrays, and the readings come from the Springer book on methods of teaching computer science, we read SIGCSE papers, and we discuss those in class. And then we have an accompanying lab with each section. So the students, after we talk about it in class, they go into the lab and do some activities that correspond with the discussion or the lecture portion of it. And then we also have high school computer science classroom observations. So we go to the classrooms and observe actual computer science teachers teaching.

Summer Professional Development Workshops for In-Service Teachers: A 2012 summer workshop for in-service teachers focused on the new AP course called AP CS Principles. About 40 high school teachers from Indiana, Ohio and Illinois participated in this three-day workshop. Participants heard from pilot teachers who discussed how they structured the course for their students. Workshop leaders also showed participants concrete activities and discussed pedagogical approaches.

Education Research: Yadav conducted CS education research to inform his modules for training pre-service teachers. He evaluated their computational thinking modules and look at how the module improved pre-service teachers’ understanding. In 2013 and 2012, Yadav gave a presentation at SIGCSE and discussed research methodology in CS. Recently, he started to explore how freshmen undergraduate students learn recursion. Yadav hopes to apply these research findings to inform his pre-service teacher training courses.

Learn more about computer science education at Purdue.

Distance Learning: In-service teachers shared with Yadav that they would find a CS teaching methods course to be very useful, but they find it too challenging to visit the Purdue campus on a weekly basis. To address this issue, Yadav and his team are planning to offer a methods course online to in-service teachers.

Recruit from Different Sources: The team recruits math and science track pre-service teachers early on in their training to become computer science teachers. The team’s strategy to recruit pre-service teachers includes exposing them to the computational modules that are part of core teacher training. The team also recruits in-service teachers through listserves and the local Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) chapter. Yadav easily recruits teachers for his workshops through his Indiana chapter of CSTA.

Korb speaks about recruiting in-service teachers as a good potential strategy to recruit more teachers to teach CS:

One of the areas we're now looking at is at in-service teachers: high school teachers who've already made the commitment to work in a high school setting. They may not have strong CS backgrounds, they may not have a lot of training in that area, but they may have an interest in it, and an aptitude for it, so we're now looking at PD opportunities for them. How can we give them the right tools they need in order to teach CS and get high school students engaged in CS education, so that when the students get to the university they're interested and comfortable in the area.

Focus on Districts that Want Your Help: Yadav:

I feel like I can't go and tell a school district to have a computer science program, you know? I think if their local conditions require a computer science course or program, that's when I think we can step in and help them, rather than me going and telling a bunch of schools.

Faculty Fellowship: For the 2012-2013 school year, Yadav received a Purdue fellowship to study a second discipline. This fellowship allows Yadav complete release from teaching responsibilities and the ability to study CS. He will take courses in CS to boost his CS content knowledge.

Multiple Entry Points into CS for pre-service teachers: Korb said,

We still need to have multiple entry points for our program so that students with no background in CS are not overwhelmed, overloaded or intimidated by the presence of students who have a computing background.

University Support: Purdue provides essential support that helps to successfully run their K-12 outreach programs with the help of an outreach coordinator. He explained that Purdue is a land grant with a mission to reach out and engage the community. He said,

It's very much politically and institutionally a part of our culture to engage the community and engage the state.

Corporate Partner Support: Korb spoke about the importance of receiving financial support from Google, State Farm and others that helped the Purdue CS initiatives with startup or general support. Companies also provided equipment, software and staff for summer camps. He said that corporations realize that engaging CS students and encouraging the study of CS is very important for the success of our country and for the success of the companies themselves.

Use your resources: Mayfield spoke about the value of using existing resources such as SIGCSE, NCWIT, Mark Guzdial’s blog, and Google’s CS4HS program.

Recruiting pre-service teachers to CS: Yadav said that typical pre-service teachers are focused on becoming math or science teachers, not computer science teachers.

Recruiting CS professionals to teach: Yadav said it is challenging to recruit CS professionals to education because it is hard for CS teachers to find jobs and CS professionals usually find higher paying jobs than teaching.

Korb explains this challenge:

We still have a challenge encouraging students to consider high school CS teaching as a career option. It's not a particularly attractive option for many students because the job market for computer science graduates is so strong--there are a large number of companies recruiting students all the time, they have signing bonuses and large offers and very attractive working conditions.

Offering in-service teachers University courses: Yadav described that there are some logistical barriers to offering Purdue courses to in-service teachers who are not part of a degree program on campus.

Low student enrollment: Yadav spoke about how low enrollment in CS courses is a challenge CS teachers face. He said that low enrollment is an issue because there is a misconception that jobs in CS don’t exist in the United States and that jobs are outsourced to other countries.

Yadav on low enrollment:

But I think they face challenges in terms of lower enrollment, and now, schools, as a result of budget cuts, schools want a minimum number of students for a class to happen. If you only have five or six students where four or five years ago, it'd be okay to run that course, it's not so anymore. Say the teacher retires, and she's had a course with six, seven students. Now will the school continue, with six, seven students, you know? Or hire a new teacher to replace that teacher. That’s a challenge for school districts.

Engaging active CS teachers: Korb spoke about the issue of making sure they are reaching all CS teachers in Indiana. He said,

It's hard to find them because they're not always identified as CS teachers; oftentimes they're a math teacher who teaches a CS course, oftentimes in Indiana a lot of CS is done as an outgrowth of the business department so many are in the business department.

Crowded high school curriculum: Korb spoke about the issue that students don’t have the time to take CS courses, so he thinks about how to integrate CS with other disciplines.

Korb on student schedules:

But the fact is that the high school curriculum is crowded. The students are already taking a lot of math and a lot of other required courses. In addition, the best students are well rounded, taking a lot of extra curricular courses. There's just not a lot of room for yet another series of courses in the program. So, we're slowly facing the issue of what gets displaced in order to teach CS or what can CS be integrated with? We thought integrating CS with mathematics was a natural option, and we continue to pursue that. There's been some interest in combining CS with physics, because there's been some curriculum materials developed that use programming techniques in the physics curriculum. We may continue to grow interest in CS in the high schools by integrating it with other disciplines and activities. One of our contacts is with a new tech high school in Indianapolis, where their approach to teaching includes problem based learning and integrating multiple disciplines. We're looking at working with them on the possibility of combining one of their courses that would include a CS component along with math or physics or some other discipline that could be used to apply those techniques to some problem of interest.

Misconceptions about CS: Korb spoke about how the challenge of recruiting students and teachers into the field of CS relates to the fact that many people have misconceptions about the field. He said,

It's a great field to be in, it's an exciting, great way to have an impact on society and people don't realize that. They think of it as a very lonely profession, but in fact it's very social and dynamic, so we're hoping that there's something that will help us. There was this recent video that went viral for a while that had a number of celebrities talking about the excitement of CS. We need some more things like that. That focused on computer programming which is a very engaging part of computing but not all of computing, so we're hopeful that those kinds of things will happen.

Mayfield on misconceptions of CS:

I think it's because not a lot of people understand it. I think people have a general understanding of what engineering is, it's hands on, it's building things, it's working in a lab, and this is all stereotypical too to say these sorts of things, and I think people understand science is like wear the lab coats and pour the tests tubes and do the dissecting of things, or you do experiments in physics, and everyone's had math since they were in grade school, and technology, that's using computers to do things, but CS, if you just throw that term out there, people aren't quite sure what to visualize, how to relate to that, and they're not sure, is this science, is it technology, is it math, is it something that's like technical education like mechanics and shop or is it academic like mathematics, and even the community itself struggles at times to define where the field sits. Is it in engineering, or science or all of the above? So because it doesn't have a very clear definition in the masses' mind, that's why it's sort of left out, people just don’t think of it, and there's no letter in the acronym of STEM that clearly is CS.

Interdisciplinary scholarship is usually not a priority of university professors: Mayfield said that the interdisciplinary scholarship in CS happening at Purdue is not recognized as core CS research and is lower priority at research universities like Purdue. He said that this sort of work is not always recognized as highly as writing for publications or producing PhD students.

Stakeholders in Indiana had many insights about how their efforts have been successful.

Train teachers not just the content but also how to teach it: Yadav said that it is important to understand the kinds of issues and challenges teachers face in the classroom and how this relates to teaching CS concepts and content. He explained that great professors or researchers are not necessarily good teachers; they understand the content but may not know how to deliver the content. Yadav recommends that teacher training not just focus on learning content but also pedagogical content knowledge, or how to teach.

Make true connections with potential collaborators: Building mutually-beneficial relationships takes time. Yadav on reaching out:

I'm a big believer in just picking up the phone and making the call. You know, and just to see if there are common threads where people can explore. For example, I think of my own experience when my colleagues in computer science and I first talked about doing this project together, I had no idea what computational thinking was and I have a CS background. I've programmed before, so I understand these concepts. But, on a surface level, if you just say this is the title of the project, are you interested in working with us? without that in-depth understanding about what it is about, it'd be hard for me to say sure. So I think maybe just walking next door, or picking up the phone and make a phone call, is that what's led to our collaboration.

Understand the high school teacher context: Korb spoke about the importance of understanding the school environment, the demands on teachers, as well as understanding their needs.

Korb explains:

One of the things that I learned most was it's a very different environment [in high school] than what you have in a university. Teachers are very time constrained: most CS college professors at R1 universities teach one or two courses at a time; high school teachers are teaching five or six. It's just a very different environment and I think it took us a while to understand and appreciate that they don't have time to go figure something out and experiment with new ideas on their own. The other difficulty they have is many of their students are not really interested in their programs, and so motivation is a big factor for them. Our students tend to be more motivated, they've already made the choice that this is what they want to do so they're here. We take advantage of that motivation and so don't worry about motivating them as much. Whereas high schools you have to spend a lot of time finding ways to engage students, to entertain them, to get them interested in this area. I think recognizing that is an important point.

Collaborate with teachers: Mayfield talked about the importance of collaborating with teachers and across departments at the higher education level. He said that teachers can provide input on what support they need and how to improve PD experiences. He said,

I think it's important that teachers ultimately feel like a full partner in the process that they’re not just the students coming in to get taught. I honestly see the teachers we bring in as peers and people that can help me -- I expect to learn from them as well.

Pair CS faculty and education faculty together in higher education to train teachers: Yadav found that this collaboration proves to be effective in training teachers to learn both CS content knowledge as well as how to teach CS.

Make research-based decisions: Yadav would like to see more funding for an empirical research base to support decisions and to determine what is effective in CS education.

More CS teachers and more students: Yadav hopes that the CS10K effort will come to fruition and we will have 10,000 CS teachers in our country. He hopes that in five years, more students will be interested in CS and that we will better understand how to measure teacher and student knowledge in computer science.

Share research findings: Yadav is hopeful that professionals and researchers within the field of CS education will share their ideas instead of guarding them. He said,

I feel like we're all in this together, so what's better for me is also better for the community, and what’s better for the community is also better for me.

Greater understanding of CS: Korb would like more people to realize the importance of CS, including what programming is, and how computers work. He said it is very important for students to deeply, not superficially, understand our technologies that we rely on.

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