We launched the CS Capacity program in 2015 to help address a very specific problem: the dramatic increase in undergraduate Computer Science (CS) enrollments, which is creating serious resource and pedagogical challenges for many colleges and universities. Through this program, we’ve been working alongside a diverse set of universitie—including George Mason University, Mount Holyoke College, Rutgers University, the University California, Berkeley, Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of Florida, and the University of North Carolina—who each bring a unique approach to dealing with increasing numbers of students with a limited resources (including faculty and classroom space).

Two years in, we wanted to share an update on some of the projects and ideas that have emerged to help support the expansion of high-quality undergraduate CS programs:

Enabling self-paced learning

Allowing students to move through learning content at their own pace benefits students by enabling them to take as much or as little time as they need to master concepts and skills. It also reduces overcrowding in CS1 by moving students into higher level courses more quickly.

• The team at George Mason have developed an online system that provides self-paced learning for CS1 and CS2 classes, guiding learners through the materials quickly or slowly depending on their needs. The system, called SPARC, includes course content, practice and assessment exercises, mini-lectures and more.
  
• At Rutgers, they’re defining additional features to improve their use of Autolab (a course management system that include automated grading). This includes building a hint system to provide more information for students who are struggling with a concept or assignment, crowd-sourcing grading, and studying how students think about CS content and the kinds of errors they regularly make.
  

Ensuring better engagement of women and underrepresented students

Women and some populations of minority students are significantly underrepresented in CS programs. More research is needed to understand how these populations are being impacted by increased enrollments.

• The team at Rutgers has been exploring the gender gap at multiple levels using a longitudinal study across four required CS classes. They’re investigating several factors that may impact the retention of women and underrepresented student populations, including intention to major in CS, grades and prior experience.
  
• The Dept. of Computer Science at Duke has been conducting a systematic assessment of what student characteristics predict retention and success in its undergraduate program—focusing particularly on women, underrepresented minorities and first-generation college students.
  

Increasing access to mentorship and tutoring

Many CS programs are dealing with the significant increase in students in early CS courses by increasing the number of undergraduate tutors, creating a need for better tutor training.

• The MaGe Peer Mentor program at Mount Holyoke College has created online course curriculum that helps to recruit and train students to be undergraduate peer mentors, preparing them to provide effective feedback on coding assignments. They’ve made this content accessible online so that other institutions can also prepare their student tutors.
  
• At University of California, Berkeley, the team has instituted a small-group tutoring program that includes weekend mastery learning sessions, increased office hours support, designated discussions sections, project checkpoint deadlines, walkthrough videos, and a new office hours app that tracks student satisfaction.
  
• The team at Duke, NCSU, UNC and UF have created a free online tool called My Digital Hand (MDH) that helps manage and track data such as how many hours peer mentors are spending with mentees. The team has also been working on ASCEND (Adaptive Student Computing Environment with Natural Language Dialogue), a tool that allows students to share their projects and chat with their peer teaching fellows during lessons. ASCEND also logs all programming actions and chats.
  

These teams participating in CS Capacity program will continue to share their solutions and results with the community via conferences and publications. Several will be presenting papers on these new interventions and tools at the SIGCSE conference in March. If you’ll be there, please join the “New Tools and Solutions to Address the CS Capacity Crunch” panel discussion on Thursday, March 9 called from 3:45-5:00 pm.

Given the likelihood that CS undergraduate enrollments will continue to climb, it is critical that the CS education community continue to find, test and share solutions and tools that enable institutions to effectively teach more students while maintaining the quality of the education experience for students.

Editor’s Note: Every year during Computer Science Education Week, partners and educators come together to help encourage millions of students to try computer science (CS). This year, Google is focusing on improving perceptions of CS while making it more accessible for underrepresented students. Follow along here throughout this week (Dec 5 - 11) to find out what we've learned from the latest research about CS education, what we're doing for CSEdWeek and how each of us can help champion #CSForAll.

In January, we announced our continued $23.5 million investment for 2016 on behalf of CS education, with the aim of reaching an additional 5 million students through our programs. We're committed to making #CSForAll a reality by making tools and programs that work for every student.

Computer science (CS) isn’t just an optional subject — it's a life skill that's become as critical to student success as reading and math. These skills can be applied in fields as diverse as music and medicine (Careers with Code). The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2022 there will be more than 1.3 million computer- and math-related jobs available, and 67 percent of these careers will be in industries outside of the tech sector.

Every student should have access to the technical skills that will help them thrive and tackle future challenges, but research indicates that some students are less likely to receive this opportunity — especially girls and minorities. That's why we're excited to be part of #CSforall: the White House's national pledge to give every U.S. student an opportunity to learn CS.

Empowering more educators to teach computer science

As the need increases for students to explore and create with computer science, so does the need for qualified CS educators to teach them. We’re committed to increasing the CS teacher pipeline through CS4HS — an annual, application-based funding program for research institutions and education nonprofits to provide CS professional development and support to teachers in their local communities. These teachers apply what they’ve learned in the CS4HS workshops to their classrooms — inspiring the next generation of technologists.

Applications for professional development practitioners are open now until March 19. Funding is available in the United States, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, China, Australia and New Zealand. Learn more on our website.

Empowering organizations around the world to provide equitable CS education

CSforAll means everyone -- worldwide. So our annual RISE program supports organizations around the world to make CS education more equitable.

Today we’re announcing the latest round of RISE recipients: 28 nonprofits in 16 countries who will receive support to continue their important work. From reaching youth in rural parts of the U.S. to encouraging young entrepreneurs in India, these organizations will join a community of past winners that are making measurable difference in the world. For example, South End Technology Center, which won a RISE award earlier this year, was started in Boston by social activist and community organizer Dr. Mel King. The Tech Center provides training for teens to become creators of technology by combining computer science with social justice and community service. We’re honored to support the program, which not only provides resources, but also mentoring skills so older students can pass on their tech and problem-solving skills to the younger students.

Empowering kids to code through fun new projects

Computer science isn’t just about complicated programming. It's a chance for everyone to get creative and have fun coming up with new ways to do things. Since only 41 percent of U.S. schools actually teach programming or coding, we'd love your help  to introduce more kids to computer science (while having fun!) during this year's CS Education week. Here are a few activities anyone can try at home or in school:

Hour of Code: Create a scene for "Gumball's Coding Adventure”

Code.org is a non-profit that offers free one-hour CS tutorials designed for all ages. Google’s CS First and Cartoon Network have teamed up to create a new one-hour activity that encourages students ages 10-13 to create their own scene for “The Amazing World of Gumball,” using the Scratch programming language. During a “glitch” in the show, students get to imagine how Gumball and his friends would react, all while learning computational thinking concepts such as abstraction, sequencing, looping and parallelism. In addition, students can express their creativity and build their confidence. Check it out!

Millions of young people around the world use Scratch, a free programming platform, to create and share their own projects, games and animations. Together with the MIT Scratch team, we’re also making the Scratch programming blocks available as an open platform, called Scratch Blocks, so that developers of other kids’ products can add Scratch-style programming to their own products. Stay tuned for updates on the Google Developer Blog next Monday.

Create snowflakes and dancing elves in the 2016 Santa Tracker

Thanks to Santa Tracker, it's now easier than ever to keep tabs on Santa’s travel schedule. But St. Nick’s developer elves could use some help to keep the holiday fun going. This December, classrooms can pitch in by coding their very own snowflakes with Scratch Blocks or using code to make those elves dance. Lesson plans aligned with Common Core are included, so it's easy to get started. Visit Santa Tracker to begin.

CSEdWeek is a great opportunity to experience coding for the first time. We hope you’ll share  these activities with your community to help make CS truly accessible.

Editor’s Note: Every year during Computer Science Education Week, partners and educators come together to help encourage millions of students to try computer science (CS). This year, Google is focusing on improving perceptions of CS while making it more accessible for underrepresented students. Follow along here throughout this week (Dec 5 - 11) to find out what we've learned from the latest research about CS education, what we're doing for CSEdWeek and how each of us can help champion #CSForAll.

In January, we announced our continued $23.5 million investment for 2016 on behalf of CS education, with the aim of reaching an additional 5 million students through our programs. We're committed to making #CSForAll a reality by making tools and programs that work for every student.

Computer science (CS) isn’t just an optional subject — it's a life skill that's become as critical to student success as reading and math. These skills can be applied in fields as diverse as music and medicine (Careers with Code). The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2022 there will be more than 1.3 million computer- and math-related jobs available, and 67 percent of these careers will be in industries outside of the tech sector.

Every student should have access to the technical skills that will help them thrive and tackle future challenges, but research indicates that some students are less likely to receive this opportunity — especially girls and minorities. That's why we're excited to be part of #CSforall: the White House's national pledge to give every U.S. student an opportunity to learn CS.

Empowering more educators to teach computer science

As the need increases for students to explore and create with computer science, so does the need for qualified CS educators to teach them. We’re committed to increasing the CS teacher pipeline through CS4HS — an annual, application-based funding program for research institutions and education nonprofits to provide CS professional development and support to teachers in their local communities. These teachers apply what they’ve learned in the CS4HS workshops to their classrooms — inspiring the next generation of technologists.

Applications for professional development practitioners are open now until March 19. Funding is available in the United States, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, China, Australia and New Zealand. Learn more on our website.

Empowering organizations around the world to provide equitable CS education

CSforAll means everyone -- worldwide. So our annual RISE program supports organizations around the world to make CS education more equitable.

Today we’re announcing the latest round of RISE recipients: 28 nonprofits in 16 countries who will receive support to continue their important work. From reaching youth in rural parts of the U.S. to encouraging young entrepreneurs in India, these organizations will join a community of past winners that are making measurable difference in the world. For example, South End Technology Center, which won a RISE award earlier this year, was started in Boston by social activist and community organizer Dr. Mel King. The Tech Center provides training for teens to become creators of technology by combining computer science with social justice and community service. We’re honored to support the program, which not only provides resources, but also mentoring skills so older students can pass on their tech and problem-solving skills to the younger students.

Empowering kids to code through fun new projects

Computer science isn’t just about complicated programming. It's a chance for everyone to get creative and have fun coming up with new ways to do things. Since only 41 percent of U.S. schools actually teach programming or coding, we'd love your help  to introduce more kids to computer science (while having fun!) during this year's CS Education week. Here are a few activities anyone can try at home or in school:

Hour of Code: Create a scene for "Gumball's Coding Adventure”

Code.org is a non-profit that offers free one-hour CS tutorials designed for all ages. Google’s CS First and Cartoon Network have teamed up to create a new one-hour activity that encourages students ages 10-13 to create their own scene for “The Amazing World of Gumball,” using the Scratch programming language. During a “glitch” in the show, students get to imagine how Gumball and his friends would react, all while learning computational thinking concepts such as abstraction, sequencing, looping and parallelism. In addition, students can express their creativity and build their confidence. Check it out!

Millions of young people around the world use Scratch, a free programming platform, to create and share their own projects, games and animations. Together with the MIT Scratch team, we’re also making the Scratch programming blocks available as an open platform, called Scratch Blocks, so that developers of other kids’ products can add Scratch-style programming to their own products. Stay tuned for updates on the Google Developer Blog next Monday.

Create snowflakes and dancing elves in the 2016 Santa Tracker

Thanks to Santa Tracker, it's now easier than ever to keep tabs on Santa’s travel schedule. But St. Nick’s developer elves could use some help to keep the holiday fun going. This December, classrooms can pitch in by coding their very own snowflakes with Scratch Blocks or using code to make those elves dance. Lesson plans aligned with Common Core are included, so it's easy to get started. Visit Santa Tracker to begin.

CSEdWeek is a great opportunity to experience coding for the first time. We hope you’ll share  these activities with your community to help make CS truly accessible.