Online EECS curriculum for high school students

Abstract

One way to increase the reach of STEM exposure and education programs is through the use of online environments. There are numerous challenges in pursuing such a solution, however. Here we present an online EECS-themed curriculum we developed and ran in the summer of 2014 that introduced rising high school seniors to core concepts in EECS. The course placed significant emphasis on short, yet complex exercise modules that relied on both software and hardware engineering concepts and attempted to develop a virtual laboratory setting in an effort to reproduce the benefits of laboratory presence of residential programs. Three different online environments were used in tandem to create an online community. We discuss the creation of the curriculum, show several examples of exercises carried out by students, present analysis of student behavior throughout the course, and discuss student feedback from this course as compared to residential programs. It is our intention that this work could provide the basis for future similar curricula, enabling cost-effective broader outreach of STEM programs at the K-12 level.