Research Plan

The MSP project’s research will investigate student learning outcomes, teacher outcomes, and questions of broadening participation in STEM. The specific research questions we will address are as follows:

  1. How do the project’s school-day and summer-intensive project work and career awareness activities impact students’ attitudes toward computing and ability to engage in computing practices?
  2. How do the project’s collaborative professional development model leads to teacher content learning and curricular adoptions?
  3. How do the the school-day intervention leads to students’ choice of continued involvement in computing—i.e., the summer camps and future opportunities beyond middle school?

The research team will employ a mixed-methods approach.  In collaboration with the evaluation team,  we are planning to develop/use multiple tools for data collection: (1) embedded content assessments, (2) surveys of CS attitudes and activities, (3) CS Summer Camp Survey, (4) interviews and Focus Groups, (5) observations,  (6) analysis of students’ apps, (7) performance assessments (e.g., debugging activity), (8) secondary analysis of school administrative data, and (9) follow up surveys and interviews.,analysis of students’ apps.

Currently, the research team is focusing on addressing questions regarding students’ development of computational thinking, including designing  an embedded content assessment, analysis of students’ apps, developing performance assessments and using structured interviews to example students’ broader development of computational thinking practices.

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