Embedding a CS & E Curriculum

Finding Engineers in your Colleagues Classrooms

Michael Chabin

The Holton-Arms School

The Problem

The number of women receiving Bachelors degrees in computer science peaked at about 38% in the early 1990s.

Only 9% of professional engineers and 20% of engineering undergraduates are women.

The Holton-Arms School

• School for Girls Founded 1901

• 660 students grades 3 - 12

• Class of 2004 (75 students):– 2 National Merit Scholars (9 finalists, and 31

commended)– SAT-1 means: Verbal 704, Math 692– 4 Admitted to Princeton

The Holton school motto is: Inveniam viam aut faciam. ( I will find a way or make one.)

With a motto like that, and students like ours, we should be producing engineers!

Some Reasons Girls Don’t Explore CS&E

• They don’t know what Computer Scientists and Engineers do (few people do). – Bioengineering– Adaptive Optics– Nano-scale machines

• Problem-solving activities like Legos, HO trains, race cars, model rockets, and even computer programming are less available to girls for social reasons. (This is mitigated in a girl’s school.)

• Despite our best efforts schools still tend to “teach by telling” rather than allowing students to create genuinely original solutions - perhaps especially in the critical middle-school years and earlier.

• There are few, if any, convincing role models.

• Technical opportunities in K-12 tend to be limited by what classroom teachers know.

Goals:

• Ensure that every girl understands technology well enough to exploit it as students and, eventually, to govern it as voters.

• Ensure that any girl who has an interest in engineering discovers it, and having discovered it, goes to college prepared to pursue it.

• Excellent Students• Parents in strategic locations (NIH, AAAS, U of

MD Engineering & etc.)• A Head of School who is committed to an

engineering program.• Adequate funding

Assets

Faculty and students are already over subscribed. • No new required courses,• Cannot add to student workload, • Cannot require teachers to master new

technology.

Challenges

• An introduction to Object-oriented Programming with Java.

• AP Java (two semesters).

Current Offerings

In terms of encouraging girls to consider CS&E majors, results have been disappointing. Last year five of Holton’s 660 students took AP Java.

One of those decided her interest in Computer Science was misplaced. “Too much vocabulary,” she complained.

So, with apologies to the College Board . . .

. . . we expect to abandon AP Java.

Parts of AP Java will be obsolete by the time our students graduate from college. Sun Microsystems may not survive that long. Can Java survive alone? Is it really the best of all possible languages?

It is, after all, the third AP language in 11 years.

The most important concepts of programming can be learned in a variety of languages - often more efficiently than in AP Java.

AP Java places too much emphasis on rote learning (many texts include vocabulary lists).

Expertise is the ability to learn what one needs to solve a problem. Our students have to make effective use of tools they haven’t been introduced to.

- Swapping disk drives- Taking a drill apart and putting it back

together- Figure out what Fireworks is on their own

AP Java conveys too much material, sacrificing key concepts and the time required to develop them.

We are delighted to sacrifice completeness for depth.

The key element in all of engineering is play, something for which there is no time in the AP curriculum.

We hope to build a CS&E curriculum in which play is a key component.

AP Java is focused on a test.

We hope to focus on helping students solve problems.

AP Java is about programming.

There is much more to Computer Science & Engineering than programming. There are languages besides Java.

AP Java is a year-long course.

We hope to make the engineer’s attitude a Holton cultural value. We need to provide children with regular challenges from grades 3 through 12.

Traditional teaching structures exclude girls from CS&E.

We hope to give our students direct experience with real problems and partner them with scientists, graduate students, and other accomplished women.

We hope to construct a CS&E curriculum that:

Is less vulnerable to obsolescenceEmphasizes learning to learnPermits freedom for in-depth exploration Embodies engineering-as-productive-playHelps students solve real problemsInvolves students from grades 3-12Provides role models

The question is . . . How?

We propose to replace the the AP with . . .

. . . the Digital Portfolio.

Imagine that each year, every student converts her best work to digital format.

Essays and short-stories are converted to HTML

Art is scanned

Sculpture and ceramics are photographed with a digital camera - perhaps in VR 3D.

PowerPoints from class would be included

So would computer programs and spreadsheets

Digital images and video could record everything from science experiments to class trips.

Imagine that highlights from concert recordings are included

Videos from sporting events, speeches, and performances

Even guest-shot videos from friends.

It would be a durable archive of a student’s year.

It would be a profoundly effective way to communicate the student experience to parents.

It would be a treasure for grandparents.

It would also be a significant technical achievement for the student who created it.

Most important, from a CS&E perspective, it would be a vehicle for implementing an “embedded” or “virtual” CS&E curriculum.

Each year, students will be required to include specific kinds of artifacts.

We might require a robot . . , . . . but no class in robotics.

Students who are working on a project can arrange for individual or group help directly with CS&E faculty - or from each other.

The important notion is this: it is up to the students to arrange for the help they need. They can get it from CS&E faculty, from parents, or from each other.

Think of it as just in time education.

We are still working on the specific grade-by-grade requirements.

The nice thing is we don’t have to get it right the first time. Nothing is easier to change than a list of requirements.

Third Grade: A Squeakland ProgramFourth grade: Lego Movies, digital images Fifth Grade: PowerPoint, Go-cart, Sixth Grade: Lego Robot, video interviewSeventh Grade Flash animationEighth Grade: Flash with ActionScript

Java - Scientific formulaeJava - Sum 1 to 1000000

Ninth Grade: Stella - Predator-prey ArcGis- Poverty map

Tenth graders might build a simple digital control system, produce reasonably sophisticated Flash Movies, be responsible for the videos of school plays and recordings of school concerts.

Juniors and seniors might focus on mastering skills to qualify for a summer internship:

IRAF - astrophysics (1 already)GIS - epidemiology, geophysics, etc.Stella - decision support Maya - 3D modelingFlash - Museum kiosks

To help with such complex projects, we hope to recruit experts, ideally women who are graduate students in a related discipline.

Unlike other elements of the curriculum, these are dynamic. They can be changed in response to:

Student interestChanging technologyCurrent themes, like elections or weatherSpecial opportunities

Once a particular competence is required for the Digital Portfolio teachers can make assignments that use that particular skill.

If seventh graders are required to produce a Flash animation then any teacher from grade 7 up can assign one, even if the teacher has no experience with Flash and no intention of getting it.

Digital Portfolio offersParents: a better idea of the school experienceStudents: a broader audience

experience with a variety of toolsTeachers: the ability to assign technology

they haven’t mastered.freedom from having to teach

technical skills.The School: a profoundly flexible CS&E

and technology curriculuma visible archive of excellence

Why not Digital Portfolios and AP Java?

Because people know what they are, APs tend to co-opt the curriculum. Parents and students alike tend to think of them as a pinnacle of High School academics.

In fact, they are not.

The critical accomplishments of a student’s K-12 career are highly individual. Digital Portfolios can capture that in a way that APs never will.

Students can still take the AP.

Our students regularly get 5s on the AP English exam and we have no AP English.

We’ll keep three CS&E electives, but they’ll be:- Introduction to Object Oriented Programming

will be half Flash and half digital electronics

- One semester Scientific Programming- One semester half Stella and GIS

For now, however, our focus will remain on Digital Portfolios as the best way to develop CS&E interest and competence in our students, and the best way to demonstrate student achievements to parents and colleges.

You should know, though, this is a work in progress. Much will change before we are finished.