Increasing Student Self-Efficacy in Computational Thinking via STEM Outreach Programs
Russell Feldhausen, Joshua Levi Weese, Nathan H. Bean · 2018
This paper describes our experiences developing and teaching two different interventions focused on computational thinking and computer science at a yearly STEM outreach program hosted by a local school district. We describe the creation of our lesson plans, how we worked with experienced and pre-service teachers alike to deliver the lessons, and how we assessed the effectiveness of each intervention. We will discuss our successes and failures, and provide information on our future plans to incorporate more formalized education theory, pedagogy, and research methodology in future years to further this project. Based on our assessment results, we observed statistically significant gains in student self-efficacy with creating computer programs that perform a variety of operations. In addition, students reported a significantly higher understanding of how computer programming can be used in daily life. Our survey also highlighted differences in student self-efficacy between the two interventions, and we discuss possible sources for that result. We discuss observed results based on student groups with various backgrounds, previous STEM experiences, and socioeconomic status.