Saving Bees with Computer Science: a Way to Spark Enthusiasm and Interest through Interdisciplinary Online Courses

In computer science education (CSEd) it is a well-known challenge to create learning environments in which everyone can experience equal opportunities to identify themselves with the subject, get involved, and feel engaged. Especially for underrepresented groups such as girls or not computer enthusiasts, CSEd seems to lack sufficient opportunities at its current state. In this paper, we present a novel approach of using interdisciplinary online courses in the context of bee mortality and discuss the possibilities of such courses to enhance diverse learning in CSEd. We report summarized findings from a one-year period, including 16 workshops where over 160 secondary school students (aged 10-16) have participated in our online courses. Pre-test-post-test surveys have been conducted to gain insights into students\u27 perceptions and attitude changes. The results show the potential of such interdisciplinary approaches to spark interest in computer science (CS) and to rise positive feelings toward programming. Particularly striking are the results from differentiated analyses of students grouped by characteristics such as low initial self-efficacy, coding aversion, or less computer affinity. We found multiple significant effects of our courses to impact students of those groups positively. Our results clearly indicate the potential of interdisciplinary CSEd to address a more diverse audience, especially traditionally underrepresented groups

Building A Thriving CS Program In A Small Liberal Arts College

In this paper we describe several techniques that have helped increase enrollment in the computer science program from 23 computer science majors in 2008 to 42 computer science majors in 2010 – an increase of 82.6%. We discuss issues related to curriculum, programming assignments, and professor-student interactions that have made the discipline more attractive and manageable to a variety of students within the setting of a small liberal arts college

Linking Higher Education and Social Change

More than four thousand stories could be told about the remarkable individuals who received fellowships under the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) between 2001 and 2010. Over the decade, the program enabled 4,314 emerging social justice leaders from Asia, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America to pursue advanced degrees at more than 600 universities in almost 50 countries. By April 2013, nearly 4,000 Fellows had completed their fellowships, receiving degrees in development-related fields ranging from social and environmental science to the arts. A survey done in early 2012 showed that 82 percent of more than 3,300 former Fellows were working in their home countries to improve the lives and livelihoods of those around them, while many of the rest were studying for additional advanced degrees or working in international organizations. The final group of Fellows enrolled in universities around the world will complete their fellowships by the end of 2013.In 2001, the Ford Foundation funded IFP with a $280 million grant, the largest single donation in the Foundation's history. The program was intended to provide graduate fellowships to individuals in countries outside the United States where the Foundation had grant-making programs. In 2006, the Foundation pledged up to$75 million in additional funds, allowing IFP to award more than 800 fellowships beyond its original projections. As extraordinary as the level and duration of funding, though, was IFP's singular premise: that extending higher education opportunities to leaders from marginalized communities would help further social justice in some of the world's poorest and most unequal countries. If successful, IFP would advance the Ford Foundation's mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement. It would decisively demonstrate that an international scholarship program could help build leadership for social justice and thus contribute to broader social change.In striving toward its ambitious goals, the program would transform a traditional mechanism -- an individual fellowship program for graduate degree study -- into a powerful tool for reversing discrimination and reducing long-standing inequalities in higher education and in societies at large. This report is the story of that transformation

Building capacity in climate change policy analysis and negotiation: methods and technologies

Capacity building is often cited as the reason “we cannot just pour money into developing countries” and why so many development projects fail because their design does not address local conditions. It is therefore a key technical and political concept in international development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is in part due to a lack of capacity to plan and anticipate the effects of climate change on crops, water resources, urban electricity demand etc. What capacities do these countries lack to deal with climate change? How will they cope? What steps can they take to reduce their vulnerability? This innovative and high-profile research project was part of a larger project (called C3D) and conducted with non-governmental organisations in Senegal, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The research involved several participatory workshops and a questionnaire to all three research centres

What is the problem to which interactive multimedia is the solution?

This is something of an unusual paper. It serves as both the reason for and the result of a small number of leading academics in the field, coming together to focus on the question that serves as the title to this paper: What is the problem to which interactive multimedia is the solution? Each of the authors addresses this question from their own viewpoint, offering informed insights into the development, implementation and evaluation of multimedia. The result of their collective work was also the focus of a Western Australian Institute of Educational Research seminar, convened at Edith Cowan University on 18 October, 1994. The question posed is deliberately rhetorical - it is asked to allow those represented here to consider what they think are the significant issues in the fast-growing field of multimedia. More directly, the question is also asked here because nobody else has considered it worth asking: for many multimedia is done because it is technically possible, not because it offers anything that is of value or provides the solution to a particular problem. The question, then, is answered in various ways by each of the authors involved and each, in their own way, consider a range of fundamental issues concerning the nature, place and use of multimedia - both in education and in society generally. By way of an introduction, the following provides a unifying context for the various contributions made here

The Changing Nature of School Library Collections

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