SBIR Phase I: A Co-creation, Cross-curricular, Standard Aligned Computer Science, Engineering, and Cybersecurity Education Technology Platform

SBIR第一阶段项目为学生提供计算机科学课程和计算思维技能，以便更好地为大学和工作做好准备。不幸的是，美国大多数学校没有提供有组织的计算机科学课程，美国只有四分之一的公立高中提供一门计算机科学课程。教育工作者和管理人员需要新的社区平台和技术支持来克服这些现代挑战并实现这些关键目标。该项目旨在设计和开发一个基于网络的软件平台，使教育工作者能够在教室和社区中心自信地教授计算机科学、工程和网络安全教育。由此产生的软件平台将使课后俱乐部、营地、夜校、校内实地考察、研讨会和教育游戏迅速发展。这一努力进一步使计算机科学和工程概念的教学民主化，从而解决了使美国在网络安全和世界经济中落后的人才缺口。该项目具有巨大的收入和增长潜力，因为它可以为2015年大约300万公立学校教师和5010万公立中小学学生提供服务。该项目将设计和开发一个基于网络的软件平台，以方便地连接、吸引和促进符合国家和州教育标准的跨学科教育计算素养资源的交流、共同创造和交付。分析和指标将被应用和开发，以深入了解有效教学所需的支持。教师将能够开发丰富、动态和引人入胜的内容，让中小学生积极参与材料并评估他们的理解。使用该平台的学生还可以获得专家导师的调试帮助、代码审查和提问。教育工作者将能够交流最佳实践，以确保持续获得高质量的计算机素养资源。因此，该平台为中小学生学习计算机科学、工程和网络安全提供了优越的教学方法。在整个第一阶段，将进行初步启动、试点研究和分析数据收集，以研究拟议解决方案的有效性。这项研究的目标是验证系统的特性、易用性，并了解第一阶段的活动是否会产生一个提供技术可行性来解决问题的原型。

This SBIR Phase I project provides student access to computer science curriculum and computational thinking skills to better prepare for college and the workforce. Unfortunately, no organized computer science curriculum is offered in majority of schools in the United States and only 1 out of 4 public high schools in the United States offer even one computer science class. Educators and administrators need new platforms of community and technical support to overcome these modern challenges and accomplish these critical goals. This project is aimed at the design and development of a web-based software platform to enable educators to confidently teach computer science, engineering, and cybersecurity education in classrooms and community centers. The resulting software platform would enable rapid growth of after-school clubs, camps, evening classes, in-school field trips, workshops, and educational gaming. This effort further democratizes the teaching of computer science and engineering concepts, thus addressing the talent gap that is leaving the United States behind in cybersecurity and in the world economy. This project has significant revenue and growth potential as it can be of service to approximately 3 million public school teachers and 50.1 million students who attended public elementary and secondary schools in 2015.This project will design and develop a web-based software platform to easily connect, attract, and foster the exchange, co-creation, and delivery of cross-curricular, educational computing literacy resources aligned with national and state educational standards. Analytics and metrics will be applied and developed to gain insight into the support needed for effective instruction. Instructors will be able to develop rich, dynamic, and engaging content, allowing secondary and elementary students to actively participate with the material and to assess their understanding. Students using the platform will also get access to expert mentors for debugging help, code review, and to ask questions. Educators will able to communicate best practices to ensure continuous access to high quality computer literacy resources. As a result, the platform provides superior pedagogy for secondary and elementary school students learning computer science, engineering, and cybersecurity. An initial alpha launch, a pilot study and analytical data gathering will be conducted throughout Phase 1 to study the efficacy of the proposed solution. The goal of this research is to verify the system features, the ease of use and to understand if Phase 1 activities result in a prototype that offers technical feasibility to solve the problem.