INFUSING COMPUTING: A SCAFFOLDING AND TEACHER ACCESSIBILITY ANALYSIS OF COMPUTING LESSONS DESIGNED BY NOVICES

Creators of computing curricula do not always have formal pedagogical training. We investigated if exposing novice lesson designers to pedagogical best practices would result in the creation of lessons where evidence of successful use of these practices could be identified. We trained 29 high school students who were in a full-time computer science summer internship on how to create Snap! programming lessons for non-computing courses. Over the course of three weeks they developed computing-infused lessons on their choice of learning topic (science, business, language, etc.).

We examined these lessons for their use of scaffolding, teacher accessibility, equity, and content. We found that students implemented many of the scaffolding techniques that they themselves experienced and created lessons that were detailed enough to be accessible for teacher use. We also identified significant relationships between both subject area and gender on equity scores, as well as an impact of collaboration on scaffolding type included. No difference in artifact quality was identified by prior student coding experience. This project represents an innovative way to engage students in learning more computer science while creating educational materials for computing in K-12 classrooms.