Computing with a Community Focus
Lijun Ni, Mark A. Sherman, Diane Schilder, Fred G. Martin · 2016
Recent work has demonstrated the power of providing relevant, meaningful contexts for computer science to broaden participation. In this poster, we present the design and evaluation of a one-week App Inventor summer camp for middle school students with an explicit focus on addressing local community needs. We recruited community partners to present their organization's work to students, and then we supported students in developing apps that would support these organizations' missions. Students successfully developed apps that were designed to address community issues. Students developed apps on topics ranging from local farmers' markets, healthy food and nutrition apps, invasive species, local trees, to providing users with information about recycling. At the end of the workshop, we conducted an in-depth interview study to examine its impact on students' attitudes and perceptions toward computer science, and supplemented this with results from project evaluation. Our results indicate that students had positive experience in learning, creating and sharing real apps for solving community problems. Focusing on local community needs can also help to motivate students' interest not only in creating apps as well as in learning more about computer science. After the camp, students became more confident in creating apps as well as in using apps to solve community problems, and the camps were successful in welcoming a diverse set of students into computing.