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Dance-a-Bit: Integrating Dance with Teaching Algorithmic Thinking

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Conference

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual On line

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

Start Date

June 22, 2020

End Date

June 26, 2021

Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division Technical Session 5

Tagged Division

Women in Engineering

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

7

DOI

10.18260/1-2--34369

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/34369

Download Count

531

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Paper Authors

biography

Litany H Lineberry Mississippi State University

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Lineberry is currently a Ph.D. student in Engineering with a concentration in Engineering Education at MSU with a research focus in cybersecurity education. She received her MS in CS with a concentration in Information Assurance from North
Carolina A&T University. Her BS in CS was received from Voorhees College. Previously,
Lineberry was Area Coordinator and an Instructor in CS at Voorhees.

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biography

Sarah B. Lee Mississippi State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3770-5480

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Sarah Lee joined the faculty at Mississippi State University (MSU) after a 19 year information technology career at FedEx Corporation. As an associate clinical professor and assistant department head in the Computer Science and Engineering Department, she is co-founder and co-director of the Bulldog Bytes program at MSU that engages K-12 students with computing and provides professional development to K-12 teachers in computer science and cybersecurity. She is the PI for the NSF INCLUDES Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing (MSAWC), partnering with stakeholders throughout the southern US to leverage, strengthen, and create awareness of existing programs and create new programs for young women in computing. She serves on the board of directors for the Mississippi Coding Academies.

Sarah holds a BS in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems from the Mississippi University for Women and a master’s degree in computer science from MSU. She earned her PhD in computer science from the University of Memphis.

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Abstract

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has been the foundation for many years for teaching critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The U.S. Department of Education website includes information about the importance of STEM in an increasingly complex world and the importance of all youth to have problem solving skills. Many researchers propose that we move away from STEM to science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). The difference in STEM and STEAM is the inclusion of arts of any kind, aligning artistic creativity with STEM learning. Zimmerman and Sprung concluded that motivation and self-confidence in computing for females is increased when they can learn CS in the context of a content area, they are already comfortable with. Recognizing this cross-disciplinary connection approach, MSU researchers in 2014 integrated a physical art component module that enabled girls to design robots using crafting material, with positive results. In 2019, the team piloted a 4-day camp that integrated learning dance moves with algorithmic thinking and computer programming. This paper will discuss results of that camp that was offered in a very small rural town in a southern state, and how the arts component influenced the learners’ perception of computing.

Lineberry, L. H., & Lee, S. B. (2020, June), Dance-a-Bit: Integrating Dance with Teaching Algorithmic Thinking Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34369

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