CSE Associate Teaching Professor Beth Simon (at right) is a co-principal investigator on a new $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help three of the San Diego region's school districts develop model "villages" for introducing and sustaining up-to-date computer science courses in their curriculum. The project is called Computer Science-Creating a Village for Educators, or CS-CaVE. This district-supported approach of sustainable professional development programs and qualified master teachers is intended to enable UC San Diego to provide timely course content updates and help prepare master teachers to share it with their peers, and through them, with students. The project tests this model, which could be more widely used to help high schools throughout the region teach current and meaningful computer science courses.
According to PI Diane Baxter, associate director for education in the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), "workforce training must evolve with technology innovations to maintain a vibrant economy. The slower pace of K-12 curriculum revision poses a significant systemic challenge to an innovation-drive U.S. economy."
CS-CaVE will roll out an Advance Placement course on Computer Science Principles in the local high school districts. The course will be based on UC San Diego's Computer Science Principles pilot program developed by CSE's Simon. The Computer Sciences Principles program provides students with a foundational understanding of the problem-solving approaches related to computational thinking. CS-CaVE will support and study how the three school districts -- Sweetwater Union, San Diego Unified and Vista Unified -- integrate the AP course into a broader K-12 strategy for introducing computing into pre-college curriculum. In addition to the new course, the CS-CaVE program aims to create ongoing links between the university and school districts for keeping the course and related computing classes current and in step with new technologies and global challenges that place increasing demands on the workforce skills and knowledge need by high school graduates.