Abstract
This paper details the creation of a two-day computer science and robotics outreach course aimed at simultaneously engaging youth (children, ages 9-14) and senior (their grandparents, ages 55+) students. Our goal is to encourage enthusiasm for science and technology in students of all ages as well as provide practical instruction regarding common computer science concepts, including variables, loops, and boolean logic. To this end, we ground our course in the emerging field of social robotics, which enables the design of several multidisciplinary hands-on activities for students. We report on a four-year experience in the development of our course, which has been offered twelve times and involved over 210 youth and senior students. Our work presents a discussion regarding the challenges in designing a course for students from diverse ages, guidelines for creating similar courses, and a reflection on how we might improve our own class. The activities and project code developed for our course are available online as open-source resources.
DOI: 10.1145/3379337.3415872
BibTex
@inproceedings{Saupp__2015, doi = {10.1145/2676723.2677248}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145%2F2676723.2677248}, year = 2015, month = {feb}, publisher = {{ACM}}, author = {Allison Saupp{\'{e}} and Daniel Szafir and Chien-Ming Huang and Bilge Mutlu}, title = {From 9 to 90}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 46th {ACM} Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education} }