Engaging High School Students in Computer Science Through Music Remixing: An EarSketch-based Pilot Competition and Evaluation

Abstract There is a strong demand for computer scientists in the United States, and particularly, a more diverse computer science workforce is needed to meet the technical and creative challenges of the 21st century. In order to build interest and excitement around computing, there is a need for free, accessible computing experiences for K-12 students so that they become familiar with computer science and understand the its broad applications and inherent creativity. As part of broader efforts to build a pipeline into computer science, scholars at ______________ teamed up with Amazon Future Engineer, a division of Amazon, Inc. focused on building a diverse pipeline into computer science, to build a coding competition centered around remixing music from popular celebrity musicians using the EarSketch platform, developed at ___________. In this paper, we describe the elements of the pilot program, which took place during the 2019-20 school year, engaging over 20, 000 users in the EarSketch platform and resulting in 1200 competition submissions from all over the country. Offerings included a 3-day competition-specific curriculum, judging rubric and process, submission guidelines, celebrity promotion and participation, prizes, and evaluation of our efforts across different stakeholder groups, including students, teachers, and judges. A formative evaluation design was utilized, including online surveys with judge, teacher, and student participants. The purpose of the evaluation was to collect formative data regarding participants' experiences during the pilot year of the competition. These online surveys contained questions about logistical aspects of participants' experiences, as well as items on the extent to which they enjoyed and valued various aspects of the competition, and allowed for suggestions for improvement. Participants in all three participant groups provided largely positive feedback about their experiences in and perceptions of the competition. Judges reported that the judging experience was enjoyable, clear, and not overly time consuming. Teachers felt the competition provided a variety of benefits to their students. Students valued the opportunity to create music through coding, and some expressed interest in taking additional computing courses. This paper will provide a detailed description of the program offered during the pilot year, as well as sample results from participant surveys.