Measuring Student Confidence from Tech Camp Participation

With recent efforts promoting computer science through industry, academic, and governmental partnerships, access to computing in high school curriculum has increased. However, a majority of high schools still do not offer computer science. While in-school programs can provide more equitable access to computing, these types of programs are not available to every student. To supplement national efforts, our university created a community outreach organization to provide opportunities to the local community. The organization creates opportunities for middle and high school students to learn different topics in computing with the main goal of increasing confidence. The primary program we offer is a two-hour tech camp, which explores a particular topic in computing. In this poster, we look to discover how tech camps affect confidence in computing. We identify which age groups are most positively affected by tech camps as well as what topics are most effective. We also discuss our methods for gathering data, our analysis of data, and how our findings will be used in future programming.