CS4MS+

Mission

Through interactions with students, their educators, and the community, our mission in CS4MS+ is to educate and encourage all K-12 students in the exploration of computer science and computational thinking.

We will accomplish this goal by providing resources, personal insights, and activities that will engage younger generations and help reinforce these concepts.

Furthermore, we will increase community involvement and awareness of the resources provided by CS4MS+ to allow our efforts to continue into future semesters.

About Us

We are Immersive Learning students who worked with neighboring schools to promote their teaching of computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT). Research suggests that social and cultural factors may be behind under-representation of many demographics in scientific, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, such as the lack of awareness of STEM opportunities. Typical school curriculums expose students to the natural sciences and mathematics more frequently than CS and CT. As a result, students have little idea what it means to be a computer scientist and lose the opportunity to become one.

To facilitate this project, we partnered with a variety of local schools. They serve students from diverse backgrounds who frequently do not have the resources available to participate in CS and CT activities. The focus of this immersive learning course is to expose our partners' students, particularly underrepresented minorities and females, to CS and CT. This project aims to assist the teachers by curating, developing, and documenting lessons and activities that incorporate CS and CT experiences for their students.

CS4MS+ in the news

Watch a short video about the CS4MS+ immersive learning project.
Ball State, Muncie schools partner to expose students to computer science opportunities (RTV6, 02/18/2019)
Lebanon native helps lead new computer science initiative (The Lebanon Reporter, 12/27/2019)
Immersive learning project brings computer science to MCS (The Ball State Daily News, 02/27/2020)

Website Creation

Will English was the original creator of the CS4MS+ website in the Fall of 2018. At this time the website specifically targeted middle school teachers and gave them the resources and guidance that would allow them to successfully teach computer science in the classroom. The website was revamped in the Fall of 2020 by Drew Thomas and Ben Eger. This shifted the website from a focus on middle school to allowing it to benefit all teachers in the K-12 system who were interested in adding computer science topics to the classroom. This shift was continued by Michael Keen and Sloan Luebbert in Spring 2021. During this time, a number of individual pages for the Standards and Resources tabs were added to the website. These pages included documents that were geared towards elementary and high school teachers, as well as middle school teachers.

Project participants

Fall 2017 CS4MS group photo

Fall 2017

Monica Appel, Meghan Duffy, Rachel Harvey, Anna Hawkins, Ben Lawson, Ryan Magley, JR Pegg, Ian Pemberton, Jordan Reidy, Tim Skinner, and Cody York; Dave Largent (mentor)

Fall 2018 CS4MS group photo

Fall 2018

Ryan Ahler, Luke Betts, Austin Bolles, Michael Bratton, Will English, Josh Passey, Alexander Perry, Sarah Phipps, Adam Wessel, and Morgan Williams; Dave Largent (mentor)

Fall 2019 CS4MS+ group photo

Fall 2019

Sara Bailey, Luke Betts, Ben Bishop, Chris Bucker, Corbin Creedon, Gwyn Hultquist, Dakota Savage, Joe Schmidt, Madison Turley, Brian Walker, and Sean Wolfe; Dave Largent (mentor)

Fall 2020 CS4MS+ group photo

Fall 2020

Ben Eger, Bethany Eyrick, Joshua Johannsen, Lloyd Rowe, Andrew Stafford, Andrew Thomas, Brian Walker, Hunter Wallace, Sean Wolfe, and Kiri Woodruff; Dave Largent (mentor)

Spring 2021 CS4MS+ group photo

Spring 2021

Josh Birnbaum, Zachary Criswell, Colin Ferguson, Adam Gackenheimer, Daniel Isenberg, Michael Keen, Sloan Luebbert, David Mitchell, and Jim Shallcross (not pictured); Dave Largent (mentor)

Spring 2021 CS4MS+ group photo

Fall 2021

Nate Slagter, Drew Heiss, Janardhen Jayavel, Nathan Lindholm, Evan Mitchell, Lindsay Bennet, Erika Dixon, Jalen Hart, Josh Johannsen, Karim Mahfouz, Tyler Newlin, and Joseph Staehle; Dave Largent (mentor)

Spring 2022 CS4MS+ group photo

Spring 2022

Blake Egger, Beethoven Meginnis, Drew Heiss, Lucas Harris, Landon Hammond, Desiree Nelson, Adam Howard, Ellie Bertke, and Chukwuebuka Victor Ezeocha; Dave Largent (mentor)

Fall 2022 CS4MS+ group photo

Fall 2022

Evan Kiser, Grant Witty, Beethoven Meginnis, Ethan Forrest, Tyler Rux, and Carlos Perez; Dave Largent (mentor)

Spring 2023 CS4MS+ group photo

Spring 2023

Dennis Beaver, Austen Lowder, Camden Hovell, Hannah Johnston, Joshua Miller, Tyler Newlin, Gabriel Slater, and Ashley Vanaman; Dave Largent (mentor)

Fall 2019 Semester Description

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Northside Middle School

Our team interacted with the students of Northside to help teach concepts of computer science and computational thinking. Mr. Rumple's class of PLTW Computer Science Innovators and Makers was the core focus of our attention, and we would go into his classroom on Wednesdays to help teach the topic of the week according to PLTW course schedule. While doing this, we helped design the course to be more inclusive to different students of different demographics. We were able to lay a good foundation for future classes to come.

Burris Laboratory School

The Burris Team had a great opportunity to create our own teaching plans. The teacher we were working with was very flexible and offered support for any ideas we brought to the table. We decided to have a six lesson outline covering: Introduction to Computer Science, Introduction to How Computers Think, Variables, Conditional Statements, For Loops, and Introduction to Algorithms. Our goal was not necessarily to introduce them to actual coding, rather, to teach them the fundamental concepts of Computer Science and computational thinking. The lessons were staggered, happening roughly every two weeks. We measured our accomplishment over the semester using a Google survey. They were given the same survey on the first and last day of our lessons. We then compared the results to see if there was any notable difference in their understanding of computational thinking.

Muncie Central High School

Our experience with Muncie Central was positive. Expanding the program into high schools was a great undertaking, as teaching principles aimed at a younger age group was the onus of our program. We ended up spending a good deal of time helping hands-on in the classroom and offering resources to the teachers. In our time together away from Muncie Central we collaborated to improve the website and update branding to be more inclusive, expanding to CS4MS+. Another accomplishment was the establishment of CS4MS+ as a Student-run organization to continue our efforts beyond the scope of a single semester.