Connecting Programming & Science Fair Projects

Connecting Programming & Science Fair Projects

Learn How One Oklahoma Teacher Used Science Fair Projects to Engage More Students in Computer Science

Hi, my name is Jeanne Smith. I am a mathematics, pre-engineering, and computer science teacher at Grove High School in Oklahoma.

Before coming to Grove High School, I spent 10 years in the corporate world working in Information Technology. I was approached about working as a mathematics teacher at a private school and decided to take the opportunity. Soon I realized my passion for taking abstract concepts and explaining them to students through the lens of real-world application. Now 20 years later, I’m still a teacher and overjoyed with how rewarding this career turned out to be.

In 2020, I joined the CodeHS Inspire Fellowship, a program focused on increasing computer science participation among Black, Latino, and Native American students.

My Inspiration

With a large population of Native American students (32%) at Grove High School, I’ve always focused on encouraging more minorities to pursue STEM-related fields. But as part of the CodeHS Inspire Fellowship, I was excited about the opportunity to work alongside other CS educators on this topic.

Several of our students are heavily involved in science fairs and are successful in the AISES competitions as well. Knowing this, I saw an opportunity to show both teachers and students the possibilities of computer science and how they could use it to compete in science fair projects.

Connecting the two topics (computer science & science fairs) would not only help recruit more students to explore computer science, but it would also recruit more students to participate in science fairs across the state.

This is how my “Programming-Integrated Science Fair Projects’’ idea started. To kick it off, I began researching judging categories at various science fairs held across Oklahoma and encouraged several of my programming students to consider working on a project within these categories.

The Challenge

Like many teachers, the one challenge I faced throughout the school year was time for myself and my students. With a stacked class schedule, we didn’t have a lot of bandwidth to work on science fair projects during class, so I encouraged students to dedicate additional time outside of class when possible.

The Impact

Seven students in my AP Computer Science A class were directly involved in Programming-Integrated Science Fair Projects during the first year. Though no students were able to formally enter the science fair and submit a project this year, a few students did research on juvenile diabetes and how to use medical data sets to do scientific research. Another student took a simple program he developed last year in CodeHS block-programming and rewrote it in Java to submit as a math/CS science fair project. He also entered it in the Congressional App Challenge and he went on to win first place in our congressional district!

Looking Forward

Because of the awesome programming-integrated science fair projects students worked on, my school district is now planning to offer a new class where students can spend the entire class period working solely on science fair projects. This dedicated time will bring awareness to new science fair projects and encourage students pursuing computer science to my school district.

To better prepare my students, I’ve already started researching science fair categories so I can tailor the CodeHS courses I’m offering to the science fair projects and categories students could possibly pursue. Next year I am getting to add two sections of a STEM Capstone course that will provide advanced students an opportunity to conduct research and work on independent projects to allow them to enter science fairs, various STEM competitions, and work on certifications.

These expanded opportunities will enable students to tailor their learning to explore various college and career options.

I will be using several different project ideas to help students get started and will be teaching the CodeHS Data Science, Coding in Science, and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence courses.

Moving forward, my goal is to recruit more students to computer science by talking with science fair participants who are active in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). I hope through recruitment in both science and computer science classes, we can increase Native American participation!