Exploring Diverse Youth's Computational Literacy and Learning Through Interdisciplinary, Multimodal and IoT Computing and Game Making Out-of-School Learning Activities

This paper reports on preliminary findings from a design-based research project, which includes a collaborative, research-practice partnership that builds upon prior efforts to understand and support youth's STEM engagement, curiosity and computational thinking through learner-centered, interdisciplinary computing and engineering activities. Primary participants (n=49) were secondary school-aged youth (aged 14-18) with little to no prior computer science and engineering educational experience, who participated in Upward Bound, a federal program for youth from low-income families where they would be the first to attend college. Youth participants engaged in 1-week summer workshops centered on interdisciplinary computational science and engineering education as part of summer Upward Bound STEM enrichment activities in two different states (one in the Midwest and one in the mid-Atlantic). We measured changes in their computational thinking qualitatively utilizing interaction analysis of video data captured during the workshop and a validated quantitative measure that holistically captures several aspects of CT self-efficacy (e.g., collaborating, abstracting, developing computational artifacts). Findings include quantitative changes in different aspects of their computational thinking attitudes and perspectives, and a qualitative case study that helps illustrate how and why certain aspects of CT may have been more statistically significant for the diverse rural and urban youth participants. We discuss the trends and complexities in the findings as well as ongoing efforts aimed at improving outcomes in related research and practice.