Analyzing Year One of a CS Principles PD Project
Ralph A. Morelli, Chinma Uche, Pauline Lake, Lawrence L. Baldwin · 2015
The Mobile Computer Science Principles (Mobile CSP) project is an NSF-funded CS 10K project. Its goal is to train a new cohort of high school computer science teachers to teach an Advanced Placement (AP) level course based on the emerging Computer Science Principles (CSP) framework. Mobile CSP uses App Inventor, a graphical programming language for Android devices, to engage students in app building as a means to get them interested in computer science. This paper reports on the first year of this effort. In addition to describing the project's Professional Development (PD) course, a 6-week, full-time summer course for teachers, and the Mobile CSP curriculum, the paper provides a preliminary analysis of demographic and performance data obtained from high school students who took the course during the 2013-2014 academic year.