CS Outreach to Inform Secondary School Students' Perceptions of CS: Initial Findings

This study covers a three-year, longitudinal K-12 outreach initiative that promoted computer science in Ireland from 2017-2020. During the first year, 2017-2018, 2900 students participated in a pilot phase. 7320 students participated in the implementation phase throughout the course of the academic years 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 in 2018. The program consisted of a free, two-hour camp that was delivered on-site at the school and exposed children to a variety of computing topics, including addressing misconceptions about computing, learning how to code, and investigating computational thinking. Schools self-selected, and the initiative reached several schools in every county in Ireland, as well as schools with a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and gender diversity. The primary school students' ages ranged from third class (7-8 years old) to sixth year (17-18 years old) at second level. This paper focuses specifically on the research data collected during the implementation phase (N=1202) from the secondary school students (12 - 18 years old) not enrolled in the formal Leaving Certificate Computer Science subject. Looking at student perceptions of Computer Science and if the outreach positively impacted those perceptions and if it built student interest in pursuing further study in Computer Science.