Enthusing and Informing Potential Computer Science Students and their Teachers

摘要

School curricula contain little direct Computer Science (CS) content, and pupil surveys confirm that pupils have little idea what CS is. A range of initiatives have been introduced by universities to address this problem, and so attract more CS students. This paper presents the Computer Science Inside... project, one such initiative, the primary goals of which are to provide materials for use in secondary school classrooms, and to motivate and prepare the teachers to deliver them. The materials are principally workshops, to be conducted away from machinery and which bring out key CS concepts underpinning ubiquitous IT products such as the mobile phone or internet. All materials are available on the web, to encourage delivery widely by academics, students or teachers. Our evaluation has shown the approach to be broadly successful, and has also highlighted directions for future work.