High School Outreach with Mobile App Programming

Abstract

The objective of our research is to promote interest in Computer Science (CS) among high school students, specifically female students, students of minor ethnic diversities, and students from rural schools or schools that do not provide programming in their CS courses. Our approach resulted in the development of coding workshops to teach beginning programming concepts while also introducing several applications of programming in the working world. This project, dubbed Code Okie: One Line at a Time, has since used the drag-and-drop programming environment Scratch to introduce beginning programming concepts at the start of our workshops. Due to positive responses to Scratch from students who attended these workshops, we believe that App Inventor, another drag-and-drop programming environment but on mobile app platform, can be used to generate more interest in CS among high school students, especially in returning students. Previous studies have taken a similar approach of utilizing Scratch and App Inventor, in some cases both, to increase interest in CS and motivate students to study CS related disciplines. Our study is unique in that it relies on self-taught, undergraduate instructors to teach high school students programming concepts. This workshop also differs in that it consists in several platforms, in which App Inventor will serve as an introduction to Python programming with Raspberry Pi and Robotics. Currently, we are developing projects that also promote math concepts.