3099 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Christian Chase
  2. Communications Coordinator
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Connected Lane County, Lane Education Service District
  1. Patrick Kennedy
  2. Director of Data Management and Analysis Group Research Associate
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of Oregon
  1. Heidi Larwick
  2. Director
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Connected Lane County, Lane Education Service District
  1. Mari Strand Cary
  2. https://education.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/mscary
  3. Senior Research Associate
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. University of Oregon

Coder-in-Residence

R305L180016

2020 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades K-6

Our video highlights the Coder-in-Residence program, an instructional program we've brought to several schools in Lane County. The video focuses on one fifth-grade class and their experience with their program, demonstrating its value and showing the impact it has made on the kids who've participated in it.

We believe programs like this are the future of STEM education in classrooms. We've partnered with the University of Oregon to conduct rigorous research into the effect of our program, measuring student engagement with STEM programs, STEM self identity, academic performance, and the effectiveness of industry-educator relationships.

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Discussion from the 2020 STEM For All Video Showcase (18 posts)
  • Icon for: Jacqueline Genovesi

    Jacqueline Genovesi

    Facilitator
    Vice President
    May 5, 2020 | 08:20 a.m.

    Thank you for sharing your video. I'm wondering how you measured student engagement and identity with the coding project? Also why did you pick academic performance as measurement?

  • Icon for: Heidi Larwick

    Heidi Larwick

    Co-Presenter
    Director
    May 5, 2020 | 01:55 p.m.

    We would be happy to share the pre/post survey questions with you if you'd like to share your email. 

  • Icon for: Mari Strand Cary

    Mari Strand Cary

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Associate
    May 5, 2020 | 07:18 p.m.

    Qualitatively? We asked teachers and coders to think of one student who "stood out" to them. We got back AMAZING and touching responses regarding the shy students, students with major or multiple disabilities, students who had major behavior issues that largely disappeared while working on these lessons, and those that established a positive classroom identity (either socially or as a source of help and expertise) with their peers (or even teacher) for the first time.

    Quantitatively and qualitatively?
    The lessons come with exit tickets completed by students that give educators and coders a chance to see if kids are particularly excited by (or confused) by that day's content. In future implementations, it will be helpful to encourage adults to review those exit tickets as they can be quite helpful to jumping into the next lesson! We are analyzing those now to report as outcomes of the randomized control study we conducted.

    As Heidi alluded, we also administered student (and adult!) surveys targeting knowledge, interest, and self-efficacy regarding problem solving, collaboration, coding, robotics and computer science and student pre & post tests to reflect changes in knowledge and persistence. Analyses are underway, but we are excited to see that we are definitely opening many kids' eyes to content and careers they hadn't considered or were scared of. We're also inspired that MANY students want to do more coding (Gigabots and other types) and that the students who participated showed small, but statistically significant improvements in knowledge and self-efficacy after just six lessons.

    This was a district partnership grant where external measures collected by the district were important and required. We hope that somehow we've effected positive change in those very distal measures. In the meantime, we are happy to move the needle on the more proximal measures.

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Michael I. Swart
  • Icon for: Mari Strand Cary

    Mari Strand Cary

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Associate
    May 5, 2020 | 12:47 p.m.

    Welcome to the Showcase and the discussion about Lane County, Oregon’s coder-in-residence program. We’ve been super excited to scale up a small pilot project to address existing STEM inequities to….

    • help hundreds of kids get a sense of what coding and computer science really is
    • reduce teacher nerves and worries about introducing coding in the classroom
    • build community/classroom relations
    • and much more!

    We’re currently working on scaling the coder-in-residence experience even further.  But the current model has limitations. For example, an obvious draw and advantage of this model is the visiting “coder” (community member/industry partner) who brings experience and perspective to the classroom. Our team sought to include a diverse array of coders and paid off.  Survey responses suggest kids really seem to notice and benefit from interacting with someone who doesn’t “look like” a coder or who came to coding in an unexpected way. But, it’s difficult to find coders who can commit to visiting classrooms at the same time every week and driving to rural schools.

     

    We’d be interested in knowing your thoughts on the following questions we are working through as a team:

    • How can we structure up front trainings and ongoing resources to help teacher-coder pairs learn to truly team-teach this content (though they’ve only just met)?
    • Would a tele-coder model (or mix of in-person and virtual “visits”) be able to accomplish the same goals on a wider scale?
    • Could we expand the kits and lessons to be fully accessible and teachable by classroom teachers independent of a visiting coder? Teachers and students appreciated the coder. If we took this approach, would the program have the same “oomph” and effect on student interest and learning (and teacher commitment, buy-in, and excitement) or is the coder a critical element?

     

    Can’t wait to talk!

     
    2
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Kristin Flaming
    Christian Chase
  • Icon for: Jacqueline Genovesi

    Jacqueline Genovesi

    Facilitator
    Vice President
    May 5, 2020 | 01:14 p.m.

    As we are all adjusting to the affects of the pandemic, have you thought about using virtual visits to solve you challenge of having coders visit the classroom once a week? If so, can you share your plan for implementation, I'm sure many of us are grappling with the same issues.

  • Icon for: Heidi Larwick

    Heidi Larwick

    Co-Presenter
    Director
    May 5, 2020 | 01:31 p.m.

    Thanks for the question!  We are definitely grappling with this question.  While students are at home and many without connectivity (living in rural areas), the program has been halted temporarily.  While we are teaching coding, we're also teaching collaboration which is tricky to do while not together in person or virtually.  This summer, we will be exploring ways to bring the content virtually to the classrooms with coders creating instruction videos, giving instruction live remotely, and rethinking unplugged activities that can be done at home without devices/robots/etc.

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Jacqueline Genovesi
  • Icon for: Abigail Levy

    Abigail Levy

    Facilitator
    Distinguished Scholar
    May 5, 2020 | 01:57 p.m.

    Your question about whether the program would have the same “oomph” and effect on student interest and learning (and teacher commitment, buy-in, and excitement) without the coder is a good one. It made me wonder about the connections between the measures of impact that your partners at the Univ of Oregon are measuring (student engagement with STEM programs, STEM self identity, academic performance, and the effectiveness of industry-educator relationships) and the teacher impacts (commitment, buy-in, and excitement). How do you see the two groups of impacts related to one another? And are the coders in residence associated more strongly with one group of outcomes than another, and if so, why do you think that's the case?

    Thank you for sharing this work.

  • Icon for: Mari Strand Cary

    Mari Strand Cary

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Associate
    May 5, 2020 | 07:30 p.m.

    We are working our way through so much data, it will be fascinating to delve into questions like these. Thanks for raising now and maybe setting us off on that path! (In other words, we don't know yet!)

    An important thing to note is that we asked teachers many questions about their enthusiasm, expectations, and confidence in regards to the program and found positive change from pre to post. Their responses revealed the program has promise for sustainability and expansion/adaptation. Both coders and teachers were enthusiastic about recommending the CIR program to colleagues in and out of their organization/district and felt comfortable with repeating the experience; most teachers even said they were comfortable teaching a couple lessons on their own (though it was clear from their surveys that they greatly appreciated, felt reassured by and leaned heavily on the visiting coders).

    Teachers’ ratings of how the lessons affected student perceptions and the students themselves increased dramatically from pre to post. I think teachers who are in the room as students engage for the first time, or get to be the expert for once, or express newfound confidence can't help but be more committed to and excited about the program. (Indeed, many asked to do it again and, unprompted, indicated they'd try to incorporate more coding and collaborative project-based learning into their classes).

  • Icon for: Abigail Levy

    Abigail Levy

    Facilitator
    Distinguished Scholar
    May 6, 2020 | 05:23 p.m.

    It would be so interesting if you could follow some of your teachers for a couple of years to see whether and how they incorporated some of what they gained from their experiences into their instruction. Perhaps a purposefully varied subset of teachers based on characteristics that seem predictive of particular outcomes. It sounds like you're already awash in data so more isn't always better, but good questions always raise more questions!

  • Icon for: Mari Strand Cary

    Mari Strand Cary

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Associate
    May 6, 2020 | 06:40 p.m.

    I think this is a great idea! We'll try to incorporate it into our plans! Thanks.

  • Icon for: Abigail Levy

    Abigail Levy

    Facilitator
    Distinguished Scholar
    May 7, 2020 | 09:38 a.m.

    I'd love to hear what you find out, Mari.

  • Icon for: Alison Billman

    Alison Billman

    Facilitator
    Director of Early Elementary Curriculum
    May 6, 2020 | 05:45 p.m.

    Thank you so much for sharing your work. I raises a flurry of questions for me. I am curious about how you recruited the Coders-in-Residence. I also wonder about the scope of their role in and out of the classroom. Did they help develop the lesson sequence? Do they lead the lessons or does the teacher lead the lessons? 

  • Icon for: Mari Strand Cary

    Mari Strand Cary

    Co-Presenter
    Senior Research Associate
    May 6, 2020 | 06:48 p.m.

    Thanks, Alison --
    Coders were recruited through personal networks, posts to websites, and word-of-mouth. Some were repeat coders from the pilot project. For scheduling reasons / distance reasons, some coders worked with multiple classes. (Again, a large argument for incorporating virtual coding visits!) Lane Educational Service District has a number of really powerful community outreach and "inreach" initiatives that are trying to connect schools and industry, fill the STEM pipeline, provide really strong career/technical experiences, etc. This program was a way to bring new companies, organizations, and self-employed folks to the table.

    One of the coders helped develop and revise the lessons and train teachers and coders. The program is designed to be co-taught, but coder/teacher pairs took every type of approach imaginable due to confidence, personalities, time, etc. Though we haven't yet analyzed that data, we did ask pairs to document who taught each lesson to help us better quantify who was teaching, modeling, assisting students, etc. In the ideal world, we'd have much more time for interaction, training and practice before the pairs work with students (remember, these coders are not classroom teachers just as much as most teachers are not computer science experts!).

  • Icon for: Dave Miller

    Dave Miller

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 7, 2020 | 09:40 a.m.

    Great project. Thanks for sharing it here on the SFA.  I'm curious about the partnerships you've generated with local STEM experts.  What have you baked into your project programming so that these sorts of outreach elements are accessible to teachers and school administrators and also how you're thinking about building sustainability into the fostering of these industry-school-researcher partnerships. Thanks!

  • Icon for: Heidi Larwick

    Heidi Larwick

    Co-Presenter
    Director
    May 7, 2020 | 02:00 p.m.

    Thanks for your thoughts and questions.  We have a robust network of industry partners and education specialists that collaborate on programming for all of our initiatives.  This particular set of lessons and activities will be housed at our ESD (Education Service District) so that teachers can check out the equipment, have free access to the lessons, and we are committed to helping connect industry to the classroom.  This program has shifted the way we work with our local research university (University of Oregon) in that we now have a learning education and research group that convenes quarterly to learn about what is happening in K12 schools and how research might be used to demonstrate impact.  Thank you!

  • Icon for: Kristin Flaming

    Kristin Flaming

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 12, 2020 | 01:21 p.m.

    This is such an intriguing program. I have never coded robots of any sort. What you demonstrate the children doing with their gigabots makes me want to try it out. Great job! 

  • Icon for: Christian Chase

    Christian Chase

    Lead Presenter
    Communications Coordinator
    May 12, 2020 | 02:07 p.m.

    Thank you! It's definitely a great place to start. The software that the LEGO robots use is mostly drag-and-drop commands, so kids can get a sense of how code is executed at a basic level.

  • Icon for: Michael I. Swart

    Michael I. Swart

    Researcher
    May 12, 2020 | 03:37 p.m.

    Cool work and thanks for sharing.  Can you expound a bit about the curricula for this program?  Its focus? Goals? Specific Skills? Are the technology professionals given a framework for their classroom facilitation? PD? Are teachers provided with PD? a formalized curriculum? Evaluations to administer? Pre-Post metrics? 

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.