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The goal of project PD4CS is to establish an evidence-based professional development (PD) program to improve teachers' knowledge to teach computer science, with a special focus on the effective training of teachers having limited computer science background. This is a joint effort between Purdue University, Michigan State University, and Project Lead The Way.
The project team will (i) develop and implement a high-quality professional development approach that incorporates face-to-face training coupled with continuous online just-in-time support at a large-scale; and (ii) assess the effectiveness of that professional development at improving teachers' knowledge and skills for teaching computer science.
In The News
July 2016: Dr. Aman Yadav, Dr. Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera, Debbie Hagen and Phil Sands participated in a Purdue University CS Teacher Workshop from July 25th-27th. Teachers from across Indiana and the greater Chicago area spent three days working on issues related to computational thinking and the big ideas in the CS Principle curriculum. One key focus was in sharing the materials developed through the PD4CS project.
May 2016: The PD4CS team and advisory board met on the banks of Red Cedar (aka Michigan State University) to plan next steps to expand the resources for teaching Python and educational research on its impact on teachers.
January 2016: Following President Obama's State of the Union Address, the CCC publishes the Whitepaper on The Importance of Computing Education Research having Susanne Hambrusch as one of the authors. The whitepaper recognizes the increase in the number of undergraduates declaring a computing major and suggests that right now we have an unparalleled opportunity to expand the reach of computing education through the burgeoning field of Computing Education Research.
January 2016: Susanne Hambrusch is an invited participant in the Google Summit on Retention in Undergraduate Computer Science program held at Mountain View, California.
November 2015: Yizhou Qian and Jim Lehman presented a poster on misconceptions in computer science and efforts of the project to help teachers address students' misconceptions at the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) annual conference in Indianapolis, IN.
November 2015: Phil Sands and Debbie Hagen presented two sessions at the Indiana Business Educators Association conference in Indianapolis, IN. The first session was designed for new computer science teachers and discussed content, pedagogy and course design. The second session focused on teaching sorting and search algorithms for the AP Computer Science A course.
July 2015: Aman Yadav and Phil Sands attend the CSTA meeting in Texas. Debbie Hagen, Aman Yadav, and Phil Sands continue visiting PLTW Core Training sessions in Dayton, Ohio, Ypsilanti, Michigan, and Terre Haute, Indiana. Over 40 teachers visited and will be participating in the PD4CS project.
June 2015: Tim Korb welcomes high school CSE teachers to the PD4CS project at PLTW Core Training sessions in Kokomo and Urbana-Champaign.
May 2015: The Purdue project team travels to East Lansing to join the Michigan State team in a planning retreat. Advisory Board members and PLTW staff participate via Skype.
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number 1502462. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
