Designing Create Tech: A Discussion of Previous Camp Iterations and Outcomes
Charlotte Avery · 2024
Since 2017, the Iribe Initiative for Diversity and Inclusion in Computing (I4C) located at the University of Maryland conducted one to three high school programming one-day workshops each semester for students from local and surrounding communities. Trends in enrollment and participant feedback indicated that an extended learning experience over several consecutive days was a growing interest among participants from underrepresented populations in computing. These participants possessed little to no computing skills and were in the early stages of deciding whether to pursue the STEM field. To address these trends, in 2019, I4C launched two one-week summer camps, Introduction to Computing 101 and Make Your Own Wearables. Later, in 2022, Create Tech a two-week summer camp was launched to address concerns with previous camps' length, instructor preparation, and program design. The purpose of this poster is to discuss the previous camp iterations and the outcomes that led to the creation of Create Tech.