NSF Grant to Spur Interest in Computer Science for Students of All Ages

March 30, 2010 - Professors in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Penn GSE have received a three-year, $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to spur interest in computer science with a first-of-its-kind, “cascading” mentoring program.

The program, co-developed by SEAS Professor Susan Davidson and Penn GSE Professor Yasmin Kafai is designed to enable college, high school, and middle school students to learn with and from each other.

The new service-learning computer science course, offered in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, will be integrated with the teaching and mentoring of high school and middle school students. Undergraduates will learn about educational theory and computational thinking, receive training on instructing K-12 students and will teach and mentor high school and middle school students in coordinated summer workshops and after-school programs. The high school students will also work with the middle schoolers.

A key component of these programs will be the use of a media-rich programming environment called Scratch as well as computational textiles. The design and use of these technologies for education has been the focus of Kafai's recent research.

“This learning-by-teaching approach will improve all of the students’ understanding of computational thinking and purposes by exposure to a variety of hands-on software design activities and materials,” said Davidson, who chairs the Department of Computer and Information Science in the engineering school.

Media contact: Jill DiSanto-Haines at 215-898-4820 or jdisanto@upenn.edu