Founded in 2002, the Young Women’s Preparatory Network is a nonprofit agency that partners with public school districts across Texas to operate the largest network of all-girls, public schools in the nation. Their schools are located in struggling urban neighborhoods, and have been recognized amongst the top public schools in Texas and the nation.
In 2019, Young Women’s Preparatory Network (YWPN) was looking for ways to engage girls in computer science. They partnered with Vidcode to create new computer science courses in middle and high school that would reach over 550 students over the course of the school-year. 7 school districts launched computer science programs at the middle and high-school level: Grand Prairie ISD, Dallas ISD, Fort Worth ISD, San Antonio ISD, Midland ISD, Lubbock ISD, Houston ISD.
550 students • 28 classes • 7 schools
Vidcode Implementation Results
7,852 Coding projects created
25 hours of coursework completed by all 550 students on average
90 hours of coursework completed by top 20% of students
One of the teachers running new computer science courses with Vidcode was Ms. Kilgore, a Robotics, Engineering, and Computer Science teacher at Young Women's Leadership Academy San Antonio. She emphasized how much using Vidcode “helped during distance learning” because of the ease in which assignments could be assigned and accessed on the student-side.
““If the girls were learning fast, I was able to assign other modules, and the icons on Vidcode were especially helpful when differentiating in a remote setting [because they distinguished between tutorials and challenges]. Tutorials were given to everybody, but challenges were given to the faster students” ”
Ms. Kilgore assigned one module per week and found that accessing Vidcode online was much easier for the students than downloaded coding software. When asked about a favorite project, she mentioned the Digital Card Project:
““ I edited the assignment slightly so that the girls got to create their card for a health worker on the front lines of the pandemic and they really enjoyed that””
All in all, Ms. Kilgore was very grateful to have Vidcode as a resource in her engineering and computer science classrooms, as she has found it difficult to find robust, long-term, CS curriculum for middle school. “Vidcode is engaging and has allowed me to impact more students with coding material than ever before.”
YWPN Students’ Published Projects
For loops, pop art activity
For loops, 5 star rating
Functions, create a filter
User interaction, cross roads
String manipulation, silly sentence
User interaction, create an app
Conditionals, heartbeat
Conclusion
The seven participating school districts saw strong learning outcomes and positive student and teacher feedback from the first year of Vidcode programs. Students were able to complete a substantial amount of computer science curriculum.
Students were introduced to intermediate levels in core object-oriented programming concepts, such as arrays, variables, functions, loops, and algorithms. As students advanced, they learned about and created simulations, data networks, and other core K-12 CS Framework concepts. Teachers loved that the curriculum is linear and that they are provided with teacher resources that make it easy for student-driven learning with teacher mentoring.
““With no prior coding experience, the Vidcode curriculum was a life-saver for me and my students! It provided the structure and sequencing I needed to offer an introductory coding course to my students. The teacher resources provided enough information to introduce each lesson and then turn it over to my students and enjoy their creativity. The sandbox was great when students wanted to explore their unique ideas.” ”
