Alaska Tech Learners: A Collaboration to Teach College Courses in Software Engineering to High School Students

该项目是威廉王子海湾学院、七个学区的九所高中和地区雇主之间的合作伙伴关系。该项目的长期目标是通过为阿拉斯加高中学生提供软件工程入门课程来满足阿拉斯加熟练技术劳动力的需求。为了实现这一目标，该项目将为服务不足的阿拉斯加高中的教师提供培训，让他们教授商业网页设计和移动应用程序开发等软件工程领域的双招生课程。这些课程将采用一种合作教学模式，将大学教师的内容专长与认证高中教师的教学专长结合起来。这些课程将满足阿拉斯加州所有五项技术标准，因此与高中毕业和大学学分相关。该项目有可能使更多的学区提供双注册STEM课程。合作教学模式具有全国意义，因为任何州都可以使用它来满足服务不足的农村地区的STEM教育需求。这个项目还有一个好处，就是为阿拉斯加的许多高中生开辟了多种目前不存在的职业道路。该项目的重点是与阿拉斯加农村学区合作，那里的学生更有可能是阿拉斯加原住民，并且来自低收入家庭。据预测，完成这些双招生课程可以提高阿拉斯加农村学生在当地高技能软件技术工作中的竞争力，有助于缩小阿拉斯加农村在技术方面的技能差距。该项目的总体目标是提高阿拉斯加所有高中教师和学生的技术能力。目前的目标是与来自多个学区的高中教师合作，为高中学生提供课程，并为学生作为高技能软件技术人员的入门级工作做好准备。参与的高中教师将首先完成特定软件工程主题的大学课程，以建立他们的内容知识、技能和信心。然后，每位教师将在他们的高中教授双招生课程。一名大学教员将协助老师，监督和评估学生在这些课程中的学习成果。这种伙伴关系有可能为参加双招生信息技术课程的高中生创造新的、高质量的学习体验。该项目期望这些课程将为最终完成证书或副学士、学士或软件工程及相关领域的研究生学位提供途径。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is a partnership between Prince William Sound College, nine high schools in seven school districts, and regional employers. The project's long-term goal is to fill needs in Alaska's skilled technical workforce by providing Alaskan high school students with introductory courses in software engineering. To accomplish this goal, this project will prepare teachers in underserved Alaska high schools to teach dual-enrollment courses in the software engineering fields of commercial web design and mobile application development. The courses will use a cooperative model of instruction that combines the content expertise of college faculty with the teaching expertise of certified high school teachers. The courses will meet all five of the Alaska state technology standards, and thus be relevant for high school graduation as well as college credit. This project has the potential to enable more school districts to offer dual enrollment STEM courses. The cooperative teaching model has national significance because it could be used by any state to meet STEM educational needs in underserved rural areas. This project also has the benefit of opening multiple career pathways that currently do not exist for many high school students in Alaska. The project focuses on partnering with rural Alaskan school districts, where students are more likely to be Alaska Natives, and to come from low income families. It is predicted that completing these dual enrollment courses can increase the competitiveness of rural Alaskan students for local, high-skill software technology jobs, helping to close the rural Alaska skills gap in technology. The overall goal of this project is to increase the technological competence of teachers and students in all high schools in Alaska. The immediate goal is to partner with high school teachers from multiple school districts to provide coursework for high school students and prepare students for entry-level work as highly-skilled software technologists. Participating high school teachers will first complete college coursework in a specific software engineering topic, to build their content knowledge, skills, and confidence. Each teacher will then teach a dual enrollment course at their high school. A college faculty member will support the teacher, providing oversight and assessment of student outcomes for these courses. This partnership has the potential to create new, high-quality learning experiences for high school students taking dual enrollment information technology courses. The project expects that these courses will provide a pathway to eventual completion of a certificate or associate, bachelor, or graduate degree in software engineering and related fields.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.