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WySLICE - Integrating Computer Science throughout Existing K-12 Core Disciplinary Areas

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

7

DOI

10.18260/1-2--38225

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/38225

Download Count

221

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Paper Authors

biography

Mike Borowczak University of Wyoming Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9409-8245

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Dr. Mike Borowczak is an Assitant Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Cybersecurity Education and Research center (CEDAR) at the University of Wyoming. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering (2013) as well as his BS in Computer Engineering (2007) from the University of Cincinnati. His research focused on detection and prevention of information leakage from hardware side channels. His current research interests include investigating the safety, resilience, and security of decentralized components, devices, and system architectures from theoretical modeling, to simulation and practical implementations. He is also involved in K-20 CS/cybersecurity education research and was the 2019 RMS ASEE conference co-chair.

Mike also has over a decade of industry and research experience – mostly revolving around the semiconductor and bioinformatics industries – with specific experience at Texas Instruments, Intel, and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. In addition to his industry experience, Mike spent two years, while completing his Ph.D., as a National Science Foundation GK-12 fellow – teaching and bringing real-world STEM applications in two urban high schools. Since then, he has worked with university faculty to promote and extend K20 STEM outreach in Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Wyoming.
He has authored peer-reviewed articles and papers, presented at national and international conferences, and taught undergraduate/graduate courses in Computer Security, Data Mining, VLSI and pedagogy in STEM.

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Andrea Carneal Burrows Borowczak University of Wyoming Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5925-3596

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Dr. Andrea C. Burrows is a Professor in the School of Teacher Education and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs at the University of Wyoming (UW). She received her doctorate degree from the University of Cincinnati in 2011. She was awarded the UW CoEd Early Career Fellowship (2013), UW CoEd Faculty Award for Outstanding Research and Scholarship (2015), UW CoEd Faculty Award for Outstanding Service to the Education Profession (2016), UW CoEd Honored Fall Convocation Faculty (2017), and UW CoEd Faculty Award for Outstanding Research and Scholarship (2019). Since beginning at UW, Burrows has written, implemented, or evaluated over 50 unique grants. She has been the Program Director for GenCyber as well as PI of NSF grants for STEM and CS work. The core of her research agenda is to deepen science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM) partnership involvement and understanding through STEM interdisciplinary integration with in-service teacher professional development (PD) and pre-service teacher coursework. Her research agenda is composed of a unified STEM education partnership structure and connects educational research to real-world practices. Burrows’ many publications appear in leading journals. She is the Co-Editor of CITE-Journal Science (www.citejournal.org). She is active and presents in several organizations such as AERA, ASEE, ASTE, NSTA, and SITE. Before beginning her work in higher education, she taught secondary school science for 12 years in Florida and Virginia (USA). 

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Mason Johnson University of Wyoming

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Mason Johnson is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Wyoming where his work focuses on secure cloud computing with multi-tenant architecture, applications of container isolation in malware research, and cybersecurity outreach among K-12 students.

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Abstract

WySLICE - WYOMING'S SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES INTEGRATION COMPUTER SCIENCE IN EDUCATION

Wyoming recently mandated that computer science instruction be provided in K-12 schools by 2022, and there is an urgent need for designing instruction that can integrate computer science into the teaching of other subjects. This project assembles a network improvement community comprised of partners from the University of Wyoming, community colleges, Wyoming school districts, the Wyoming Library System, the Wyoming Department of Education, and local software development firms. The community meets once monthly over the duration of the project to collaborate stakeholder agendas for meeting the project goals. The community enlists K-8 teachers from across the state to experience professional development and collaborate on integrating computer science into their instruction of STEM and social science topics. The project is producing units for teachers, who are implementing these units with support from master teachers and educational scholars. The community serves as a forum for teachers to debrief and learn from each other about ways to improve their instruction and design of the curricular units. Libraries in the state system act as partners for dissemination to rural areas of the innovative instructional approaches.

WySLICE prepares 150 K-8 teachers and state librarians from all disciplines to integrate computer science into their teaching. The project is reaching almost half of all K-8 students in Wyoming. The research questions address how teachers use modeling practices as supports for student understanding of algorithms and coding in a variety of ways. The curricula involve cybersecurity as well as other topics relevant to measurement in mathematics and social studies topics that involve social concerns like voting. Data sources include teacher lesson plans and recordings of their instructional implementation, scoring of each of these according to a rubric, meeting notes of monthly meetings, and results from pre-post student assessments. The evaluation focuses on the meeting of project goals and the quality of the management of the network improvement community. This project is jointly funded by CS for All and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under DRL Grant #1923542 "CS For All:RPP - Booting Up Computer Science in Wyoming."

Borowczak, M., & Borowczak, A. C. B., & Johnson, M. (2021, July), WySLICE - Integrating Computer Science throughout Existing K-12 Core Disciplinary Areas Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--38225

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