At Google, I lead the Outreach team for Computer Science and Digital Skills Education, which means I get to support CSTA and other great organizations working to broaden access to CS education. In this role, I often find that educators are especially interested in learning more about Google employees (we call them Googlers) who use computer science, so that they can better prepare their own students for the workplace. 

I recently undertook a non-scientific study and polled a small sample of 15 Googlers* in technical roles (nearly all engineers) about their K-12 CS education experiences, in hopes that they’d provide some advice I can pass onto CSTA members. Here are seven themes that emerged:

1. Encouragement is really important and comes in many forms. 

Given the body of research demonstrating the importance of encouragement in helping students persist in CS education (e.g., this white paper), it’s not surprising that Googlers talked a lot about receiving encouragement. This came mostly from teachers and parents. Interestingly, friends/peers were a pretty distant third place. Googlers gave lots of examples of how educators provided them with valuable encouragement, including:

• My AP CS teacher encouraged me to apply for an NCWIT award, which I won. I joined the Facebook group and immediately felt more included in the national CS and specifically women’s CS community.
• My high school math teacher was my biggest cheerleader when it came to CS. He had a pretty limited coding background himself, but had the foresight to recognize that CS was the next big thing and that I was good at problem solving and puzzles. 
• My teacher encouraged me to apply for internships and the Computer Science Summer Institute program, which I attended before college.

2. Share opportunities and challenge your students to stretch themselves.

While some Googlers didn’t know about CS opportunities or didn’t have people in their lives with access to that information, several mentioned that teachers often passed on valuable information about internships and scholarships. Some said that their teachers challenged them to stretch themselves in ways that they might not have otherwise considered. 

• My teacher pushed me to try the next thing and keep investing in my CS education.
• My teachers shared available IT-related internship opportunities in the area.
• Even if they don’t feel qualified, get your students to apply for scholarships, summer camps, and other opportunities. Most will feel hesitant even if they are qualified! Consider offering extra credit for stretching themselves.

3. Make computer science relevant. Personalize the education.

Googlers shared that effective teachers used a wide range of examples and projects, tying content to students’ interests, to make CS feel relevant. Practical applications were especially inspiring, as were real life demonstrations of programs to show CS in action. Some Googlers called out the importance of rigorous CS content or having flexibility for advanced students to explore and learn further on their own.

• The teacher built a class management system that would randomly pick students to answer questions, and would automatically grade them at the end of the term based on their answers.
• Leveraging CS to run low-cost experiments can show its relevance.
• Find and share exciting examples through YouTube videos related to topics of interest. 
• Don’t be afraid to let the students have freedom to do things their way — it’s messier, but empowers creativity. 

4. Connect lesson plans to WHY students should learn CS.

Related to the above theme, Googlers gave examples of how successful teachers not only taught them how to do things, but also helped them understand why they were learning those CS concepts.

• My best CS teacher made the lessons relevant. He always highlighted why we were learning specific concepts.
• Begin by posing problems first, then introduce the tools to solve them. This encourages creativity and divergent thinking, making it easier for students to remember the applicability of the tools.
• Connecting theory with their practical industry experience made it much more tangible why we were learning CS.

5. Foster collaboration, sharing, and connections.

The importance of teamwork, community, and sharing work samples were mentioned by several Googlers. By inviting students to share their work, teachers not only encouraged peer-to-peer teaching and learning, but also provided validation and recognition. Similarly, building communities fostered friendships among peers with similar interests.

• Seeing advanced work done by peers encouraged me to learn more.
• [My teacher encouraged me by] letting me show my finished programs.
• Peers played an enormous role, as we were programming together to solve Project Euler problems.
• My teacher sponsored a computer club, which introduced me to other students with similar interests.
• One friend took the intro course [with me], and her friendship was key to me staying in CS.

6. Teacher support helped students overcome various challenges.

Googlers shared a host of challenges they faced, and in some cases, how teachers helped them overcome these barriers. The most common themes were: lack of CS as a core subject or unavailability of courses; insufficient computer or internet access, especially in rural areas; lack of exposure to CS and mentors; facing gender stereotypes and being made to feel out of place as a girl; and general low self-confidence or impostor syndrome. 

• Resources were limited, but my teacher pointed me towards opportunities that were available (university classes, online forums and Q&As, etc.).
• I had a couple of big missed areas due to being self-taught.
• My biggest challenge was lack of structured content beyond intro level.
• The first time learning something it can seem impossible, but revisiting makes it clearer. Keep reteaching tough concepts to struggling students — it might eventually click.

7. Keep up the great work!

Finally, Googler advice for CS teachers included some gems that didn’t quite fit the themes above, but that I felt compelled to share as they aligned nicely with CSTA’s work of supporting CS teachers through professional development, community, and inspiration: 

• Keep growing as computer scientist yourself!
• Have a growth-mindset approach to teaching (and learning).
• CS classes changed my life. Your classes will most likely change someone else’s.

* Here’s more information about the 16 Googlers who completed my survey: 80% are engineers with varying years of experience. There was a diverse representation across age ranges and also race/ethnicity, and 60% were female. On average, the Googlers were first exposed to CS at age 14 (responses ranged from 7 to 18), though they reported really enjoying CS at age 17. Not surprisingly, nearly everyone described multiple points of exposure, with in-class learning and self-learning by far the most commonly cited. Learning from family/friends, after-school programs, informal programs (libraries and youth-serving organizations), bootcamps, and internships were also mentioned. Over two-thirds of Googlers identified a teacher who played a critical role in their learning: most mentioned a CS/programming teacher, but mentors also included computer lab staff and a librarian.

The field of mathematics is at least 5,000 years old; we can trace its origins to Mesopotamia [1].

Physics is at least 2,500 years old; in classical Greece, scholars knew the Earth was round [2].

Chemistry dates from about 250 years ago, to the late 1700s. Some consider the work of Antoine Lavoisier, “who developed a law of conservation of mass that demanded careful measurement and quantitative observations of chemical phenomena,” as marking the beginning of modern chemistry [3].

What about computer science?

We can go back to Charles Babbage, and his work on the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, beginning in the 1820s. That’s about 200 years ago [4].

The theoretical foundations for computing date from the early 1900s. These were established by the invention of the lambda calculus, by Alonzo Church in the 1930s, and the Turing machine formalism, by Alan Turing in 1936.

Fun facts: (a) Lambda calculus is a way of describing computations via compositions of mathematical functions. Understanding it provides an incredible insight into recursion, but doesn’t help you understand how to build a computer. (b) The Turing machine abstraction, on the other hand, describes a “tape” which has a linear series of memory cells, a “head” for reading and writing data to the cell underneath the head, and a set of rules for deciding what to do at each step and which way the head should move next. It’s a lot more like an actual machine (and hence its name). (c) Also, Alonzo Church (inventor of the lambda calculus) was the doctoral adviser of Alan Turing!

It was a decade after this work, in the late 1940s, that the idea of a stored-program computer was introduced, by John von Neumann [5].

I’d say these are the key moments in the history of the ideas behind computing.

When did computer science professionalize?

Another way of marking history is to look at professional organizations.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) was founded in 1947 [6], and SIGCSE, the Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education, held its first annual Symposium in 1970 (next year in 2019 will be its 50th meeting!) [7].

At the university level, “departments of computer science” didn’t become widespread until the 1980s—about 35 years ago! [8]

Our own Computer Science Teachers Association was founded in 2004—meaning next year will be our fifteen year [9]. By comparison, the US-based National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) inaugurated its first president in 1920—it’s nearly 100 years old! [10].

What about computing in K–12 schools?

Seymour Papert, with Cynthia Solomon, and others, did their foundational work on Logo beginning in the late 1960s.

In the United States, it wasn’t until computers like the Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1981), the Apple IIe (1983) and the IBM PCjr (1984) shipped that computers started to enter schools in large numbers.

That’s also about 35 years ago.

Why does this history matter?

We need to remember that we all are the pioneers at the beginning of a vast intellectual and cultural journey.

At the higher ed level, what’s remarkable about computer science curricula is that smart minds don’t agree! Some CS departments start with Java and teach the machine late. Others start with C, introduce the machine early, and teach abstract principles late.

That’s just one example of the diversity in university CS curricula. There are many others.

Compare this to mathematics and physics. In those disciplines, everyone knows that the “correct answer” is to teach differentiation followed by integration (Calculus I and II) and mechanics followed by electromagnetism (Physics I and II). Practically every first year science and engineering student across the United States will take courses in that sequence.

Our field is nothing like this. We are still figuring out what works. (Probably, lots of sequences will work, and I personally hope that we never arrive at a “best” answer.)

In K–12, we are exploring integrating computer science into other subjects—for example, using modeling and simulation in understanding science.

Ours is the really exciting time. We should revel in being the pioneers—our work has the chance to set the direction in our field for a long time to come.

Fred Martin, Chair of Board of Directors

Sources:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics
3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemistry
4. www.computerhistory.org/babbage/
5. www.britannica.com/technology/stored-program-concept
6. www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-history
7. users.cs.duke.edu/~rodger/sigcseconferences.html
8. csrankings.org
9. www.csteachers.org/page/About
10. www.nctm.org/About/President,-Board-and-Committees/History-of-the-NCTM-Board/