Making the connection: programming with animated small world
Proceedings of the 5th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSEconference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Teaching programming and language concepts using LEGOs®
ITiCSE '05 Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Computational thinking via interactive journalism in middle school
Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Learning computer science concepts with scratch
Proceedings of the Sixth international workshop on Computing education research
The Scratch Programming Language and Environment
ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE)
Animal tlatoque: attracting middle school students to computing through culturally-relevant themes
Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Habits of programming in scratch
Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Building upon and enriching grade four mathematics standards with programming curriculum
Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
What do students learn about programming from game, music video, and storytelling projects?
Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
Spaghetti for the main course?: observations on the naturalness of scenario-based programming
Proceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Hairball: lint-inspired static analysis of scratch projects
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Hairball: lint-inspired static analysis of scratch projects
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Modeling the learning progressions of computational thinking of primary grade students
Proceedings of the ninth annual international ACM conference on International computing education research
Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
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Many institutions have created and deployed outreach programs for middle school students with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of students who later pursue careers in computer science. While these programs have been shown to increase interest in computer science, there has been less work on showing whether participants learn computer science content. We address two questions, one specific, and the other more general: (1) "What computer science did our middle school students learn in our interdisciplinary two-week summer camp?" (2) "How can computer science concepts be assessed in the context of Scratch-based outreach programs"? We address both questions by presenting the design of our summer camp, an overview of our curriculum, our assessment methodology, and our assessment results. Though the sample size is not statistically significant, the results show that a two-week, interdisciplinary, non-academic summer camp can be effective not only for engaging students, but also for imparting CS content. In just two weeks, with a curriculum not entirely focused on computer science, students displayed competence with event-driven programming, initialization of state, message passing, and say/sound synchronization. We have employed assessment methodologies that avoid written exams, an approach both outreach and classroom-based programs may find useful.