An Experience Report on the Effectiveness of Five Themed Workshops at Inspiring High School Students to Learn Coding

Abstract

Today there is a high demand for computing programmers, and at the same time a shortage of skilled professionals. This has triggered the creation of many initiatives in the past few years, with the aim of reversing the phenomenon. To achieve this, such events are designed to promote a more appealing image for programming, both as a profession and as a skill. This paper describes one such initiative, which uses a unique blend of differently themed, parallel workshops to motivate high school students to learn programming. With the use of questionnaires, we survey the participants and present our findings concerning the effectiveness of these workshops to engage the participants, to promote the value of coding, and to encourage the participants to consider a career in the field. We evaluate our results both at a general level, as well as by comparison among five individually themed workshops.