An introduction to Alice programming: tutorial presentation
Karina Assiter, Durga Suresh · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2016
Attracting under-represented groups into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) pipeline (to college and, beyond, to career) has become a top priority in higher education, but it will become even more important as our nation's population becomes increasingly diverse (according to the US censes, by 2044, more than half of all Americans are projected to belong to a minority group [3]). Though there are many theories on what are the most effective methods for increasing the number of girls, specifically, into the STEAM pipeline, there is general agreement that we must engage them as early as possible, either in elementary or middle school [6]. There are numerous tools/environments [4, 5, 7, 8] that have been developed to get young girls interested in (excited about) programming; educators at all levels are participating in workshops, summer and after school programs [1, 9, 10] that introduce these tools/environments to the target population(s). This tutorial will focus, specifically, on the Alice programming environment [2]. Attendees will get: a short tutorial on programming in Alice, a template for a workshop format that was (successfully) implemented during a girl-scout event at the tutorial leader's institution and plenty of opportunity for exploring/experimenting with the numerous features and functionality of Alice.