Computer Science through Concurrent Enrollment: Barriers and Supports to Broadening Participation

CS Principles (AP-CSP) is giving more girls and under-represented students access to CS education, but CSP has not reached all students. Concurrent enrollment (CE), in which students take CE courses in their high school for college credit, is offered in places and to students who may not have access to Advanced Placement. The CS-through-CE project, an NSF-sponsored Research Practice Partnership, aims to broaden participation in computing by piloting and studying CE implementations of Mobile CSP, an effective CSP curriculum that has now been adapted as a college course. Initial research has identified barriers and supports to implementing Mobile CSP as CE in two contexts (rural, low-SES and urban, diverse, low-SES). This poster will present factors that support or impede implementation of CS-through-CE at the external level (e.g., policy, systems, context), the post-secondary CE program level (e.g., instructor qualifications, student eligibility, school outreach), and school/classroom level (e.g., teacher availability, student recruitment, administrator support). We aim to gather feedback on these results, as well as engage with others with experience with or interest in offering CS-through-CE.