UC San Diego

Expertise in any field is a combination of skill and enculturation. When entering a field, novices gain expertise by developing skills, but more importantly, novices need to become a part of the community. Apprenticeships and mentorships are common methods for modeling learning experiences that combine skill and culture to teach and enculturate novices. However, computer science is a field that is growing so quickly that the apprentice/mentor models have been stunted due to high student-teacher ratios. I hypothesize that we can scale the apprenticeship of novices by integrating enculturation with skills learning. In this dissertation I contribute the design, implementation and evaluation of two learning experiences that integrate skills and enculturation, thus scaling the teaching of novices ranging from 9-years-old to Bachelor's-level into computer science. The first contribution is to a large, Bachelor's- level, in-person course where I use Peer Instruction and Exploratory Homeworks to enrich student learning. The second contribution is CodeSpells, an immersive learning experience that enculturates and teaches children as young as 9 years old