Welcome and overview

CSinc is proud to announce for the third year running, the summer projects. The goal of the projects is to develop further the CSinc activities. Who is CSinc?

Computer Science Inclusive (CSinc) is a voluntary group of enthusiastic educators based out of TU Dublin, Tallaght campus. The team consists of five Computer Science lecturers who devote their spare time to promoting inclusivity and inclusive practices in Computer Science at primary and second level, where our mission statement is: “Approaches that promote inclusivity are a priority for the CSinc team. The CSinc team want to reach all types of schools, school levels and locations. The inclusive in CSinc means that if you are a rural school in Connemara or a local school in Dublin, we would like to work with you”. We aim to simply address the current incorrect perceptions and promote computer science nationally, developing research-based and pedagogically sound inclusive primary- and secondary-level outreach model’s, trying to reach as many students as possible in person (or virtually). Over the four years, the five Computer Science Inclusive volunteer members have worked with over 14000 students from every county in Ireland (that is approximately 100-110 schools and 3500 students per year and works out about 40 hours of volunteer outreach per week). As part of this work, our target audiences have naturally formed three distinct spaces in which we deliver tailored outreach programs, each with different criteria (and most importantly they are completely free for the students and the school):

Our two main activities for 2022-23

• A specific Transition Year (TY) Programme CSLinc, providing a scaffolded MOOC (Massive Open Online Learning Course) to enable schools that may not have the facilities, resources, equipment or qualified teachers to deliver formal curricula in the form of Computer Science mini-courses. Where approximately 10000 students have taken the programme this year.

• A Leaving Certificate Computer Science (LCCS) set of outreach camps. This subject is in its infancy and only in its third year of a national roll-out . Computer Science Inclusive work closely with many bodies and focus our outreach with workshops targeting specific components of the Leaving Certificate subject specification.

In addition to all of our outreach programs, we also develop many software systems to help us in our work.

Can and how do I apply?

You can apply if you are:

• A TU Dublin student (any campus), undergraduate, postgraduate, full-time or part-time.

• A primary or secondary school teacher (outside of TU Dublin)

• Anyone who is interested in helping!

Application process:

• Fill in the form below

• Shortlisting may occur

• Interviews take place in early June (we will contact you for these)

• Work takes place from June to August

What is involved?

There are several projects that we hope to run this summer. These range in details, from the development of material for our CSLinc modules, to pure software development using the latest DevOps approaches. Below is a list of the proposed projects and a brief summary of what is involved.

The workload is self-paced, and we can work with you on deliverables and when you work over the summer, the expected workload varies per project, but these are essentially part-time projects.

You can use the project for your CV and of course, we will post all participants on the CSinc webpage, last years can be found at: http://csinc.ie/Home/Research

2022 Summer Research Projects:

1. Integrate The Beauty and Joy of Computing course into CSLINC

The Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) is an introductory computer science curriculum for secondary school students or college students. BJC emphasizes the joy and complexity of creating visual computer programs and applications, balanced with critical reflection on the impacts of new computing technology. BJC is an CS Principles course supported by the NSF and endorsed by the College Board and code.org. CSinc are delighted to be introducing the BJC course into CSLINC. This project will involve putting the course material into CSLINC templates, videos, lesson plans, activities and solutions, as well as an end of module assessment.

2. Python through Irish

We are generating an Irish version of our existing Python module. This project will build on the existing content that is available and will involve putting the course material into CSLINC templates, videos, lesson plans, activities and solutions, as well as an end of module assessment into Irish.

3. Teacher Professional Development

Over the past two years, CSINC have transitioned their teacher CPD sessions to an online format. This format allowed us to record the content as it was presented. Our aim is to make these videos and associated content e.g. code samples and design ideas, freely available in an online repository called CSLINC (CS Inclusive Learning Environment). The availability of these videos and associated content on CSLINC, to the teachers, would allow them to review material in their own time and as often as they wanted. We believe this resource would be a significant ongoing support to teachers who are new to the delivery of CS content. The video content is already there, the recording needs to be edited to ensure that content is accurate and focused on task (that is removing Q and A sections and teachers’ contributions to anonymise the content).

4. Moodle Registration System

CSinc has developed a Computer Science TY programme that is currently being rolled out to schools all across the country. Currently there are ~10000 students are taking the programme. As it stands we are using Moodle to host the content and the students receive a username and password and then will have access to their courses as part of a class in a particular school.

We are looking to build an automatic pipeline which will enrol both students and teachers into their respective Moodle courses.