Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

An IoT and Wearable Technology Hackathon for Promoting Careers in Computer Science

2016; IEEE Education Society; Volume: 60; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1109/te.2016.2626252

1557-9638

Jake Rowan Byrne, Katriona O’Sullivan, Kevin Sullivan,

Educational Leadership and Innovation

This paper explores the use of a constructivist 21st Century learning model to implement a week long workshop, delivered as a "Hackathon", to encourage pre-university teenagers to pursue careers in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) with a particular emphasis on Computer Science.For Irish pre-university students, their experience of computing can vary from word-processing to foundational programming and, while many schools are looking to introduce more ICT into the classroom, many students are left with a narrow view of what Computer Science is all about.Twenty one students participated in the workshop and completed pre and post surveys, and free word association with the areas of computing and careers in computing.Analysis revealed that students motivation to learn about the design process, programming, Inputs and Outputs and Wearables Technologies/Internet of Things (IoT) increased following participation.There were also increases in confidence in Inputs and Outputs and Wearables Technologies/IoT following participation.There were changes in the computing word associations following participation, with students associating computing with more computer programming terms rather than more general terms such as the internet.The findings suggest that the combination of a "Hackathon" event and a model for 21 st century learning can be effective in motivating and increasing the self-efficacy of pre-university teenagers in a number of emerging technological contexts such as IoT and Wearables.