Digital competence (DC) is a broad set of skills, attitudes, and knowledge for confident, critical, and responsible use of digital technologies in every aspect of life. DC proves essential in the contemporary digital landscape, yet its diffusion is hindered by biases, misunderstandings, and limited awareness. Teaching Informatics in the…

In response to the need to broaden participation in computer science, we designed a summer camp to teach middle-school-aged youth to code apps with MIT App Inventor. For the past four summers, we have observed significant gains in youth's interest and self-efficacy in computer science, after attending our camps. The majority of these youth,…

Problem: The involvement of external stakeholders in capstone projects and project courses is desirable due to its potential positive effects on the students. Capstone projects particularly profit from the inclusion of an industrial partner to make the project relevant and help students acquire professional skills. In addition, an increasing push…

The dearth of women choosing information technology (IT) careers has been identified as a national problem in the United States. Efforts have been made to combat this by educating girls at a young age about technology. Recent research demonstrates that exposure to technology is insufficient to change young girls' attitudes towards IT careers and…

Georgia Computes! ("GaComputes") was a six-year (2006-2012) project to improve computing education across the state of Georgia in the United States, funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal of GaComputes was to broaden participation in computing and especially to engage more members of underrepresented groups which includes…

If we are to attract more women and minorities to computing we must engage students at an early age. As part of its mission to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing, the Increasing Student Participation in Research Development Program (INSPIRED) conducts computing academies for high school students. The…

In 2004 the German state of Bavaria introduced a new compulsory subject of computer science (CS) in its grammar schools ("Gymnasium"). The subject is based on a comprehensive teaching concept that was developed by the author and his colleagues during the years 1995-2000. It comprises mandatory courses in grades 6/7 for all students of…

This article describes an outreach program to broaden participation in computing to include more students with visual impairments. The precollege workshops target students in grades 7-12 and engage students with robotics programming. The use of robotics at the precollege level has become popular in part due to the availability of Lego Mindstorm…

Many undergraduate liberal arts institutions offer computer science majors. This article illustrates how quality computer science programs can be realized in a wide variety of liberal arts settings by describing and contrasting the actual programs at five liberal arts colleges: Williams College, Kalamazoo College, the State University of New York…

Hypertextbooks for Computer Science contents present an interesting approach to better support learners and integrate algorithm animations into the learning materials. We have developed a prototype for integrating a selection of the functionality of such a hypertextbook into the established Moodle LCMS. This article describes the goals and…

We propose an extension of the Teaching Machine project, called Quiz Generator, that allows instructors to produce assessment quizzes in the field of algorithm and data structures quite easily. This extension makes use of visualization techniques and is based on new features of the Teaching Machine that allow third-party visualizers to be added as…

The Students and Technology in Academia, Research, and Service (STARS) Alliance is a nationally-connected system of regional partnerships among higher education, K-12 schools, industry and the community with a mission to broaden the participation of women, under-represented minorities and persons with disabilities in computing (BPC). Each regional…