Does contextualized computing education help?

Abstract

Overview - in the March 2010 Inroads, Steve Cooper and Steve Cunningham presented an editorial arguing for "Teaching computer science in context" (Cooper and Cunningham 2010). Context is the use of a consistent application or domain area, which effectively covers the core areas of a computer science course, provides a source for explanations and a basis for student projects (Tew, Dorn et al. 2008; Guzdial 2009). Examples of contexts for introductory computer science include Media Computation (Guzdial 2003), Alice (Cooper, Dann et al. 2003), and Robotics (Balch, Summet et al. 2008).