Incorporating industrial co-op experience in high school classroom outreach

Abstract

This paper describes high school STEM lessons created by three undergraduate mentors. The mentors participated in a classroom outreach program called Computer Science Investigations (CSI: Cincinnati) as part of the Mentoring for Connections to Computing effort funded by the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing program. The CSI program performs pre-college outreach with a team of undergraduates in computing-related majors who deliver an original lesson with hands-on activities and interact with high school students in their classroom. The mentors leverage their industrial and academic experiences to create the lessons and act as role models for college and professional success. The evaluation of the CSI activities includes pre-and post-surveys of the high school students' interest in computing as well as reflections from the mentors' journals.

Just Desserts: Mechanical Engineering Meets Computing Outreach

“…For each visit, one student conducted the lesson while the rest of the team members sat with small groups of students to interact informally and assist with the lesson activities. Materials developed for activities include an online repository, lesson plans, supply lists, activity descriptions, and other supporting documents [2,3].…”

Hands-On Science Activity in Digital Circuits for High School Students

“…A variety of different approaches to introducing pre-college students to engineering concepts have appeared in the literature, including some that use robotics competitions [8,9] as the basis for the project, another that exposes high school teachers to fuel cell technology [12], and others that introduce students to industrial co-operative education experiences in medical imaging, IC design and mobile radio [13], or to academic research [11]. Our activity differs from those listed above, in that it is focused on low-level circuit prototyping, it relies on interaction between participants and current undergraduate students to complete the project, it is completed in a single three-hour session, and because it is only one of nine activities in different fields that are part of the INVESTING NOW program.…”