“Inform, Experience, Implement” — Teaching an intensive high school summer course

During the summer of 2011, twenty-four high school students participated in an intense, three-week computer science course at the University of Virginia. The course met for twenty-one three-hour sessions, thus encompassing more contact time than a standard college-level course. The course was structured in an “Inform, Experience, Implement” active-learning format: students were exposed to the history of a particular problem in context and participated in an active learning lesson regarding the topic before learning how to address the examined problem through programming. This structure helped integrate into the course best practices from experiential learning, kinesthetic outreach activities, and active learning pedagogy. Utilizing this three-part rotation curriculum achieved some important goals, including holding the interest of students during the summer for six hours a day and successfully motivating students who had no programming background.