Hi Heidi, Thank you for your question. The idea for the pairing originated with CSforALL, an organization devoted to ensuring that all kids get a high quality computing education as an integral part of their K-12 experience. The Air Force's JROTC program in high schools represents a significant pool of untapped tech talent, and is comprised of a highly diverse population–with a majority-minority student population and 40% of JROTC cadets being female, and JROTC is strongly represented in schools serving economically disadvantaged populations (over 50% Title 1 schools). Yet today, 68% of these students do not have access to AP computer science in their school.

The pairing seemed like a great way to serve a highly diverse pool of students at scale across the country. Cybersecurity is a CS topic of great interest to the Air Force, and we see getting a CS toe hold in the 30 schools represented in this project as helping to build capacity in those schools to choose to offer additional CS-related skills and topics in the future.

Hi Brian, I'm picking up your second question and another team member will pick up your first. I think the first aspect of the Cyber Academy that made this possible was the focus on relationships and mentorships. In addition to the instructors, there were five dedicated undergraduate/graduate mentors and an Air Force captain who also served as cadet mentor/cheerleader/coral-er. Each cadet was assigned to a team with one of the mentors, and the teams were very carefully formed with recognition of their previous experience, gender, and race/ethnicity to help mitigate impostor phenomenon while also encouraging a "learn from each other" environment.  

The second aspect that helped enable this was the cadets themselves. I believe their leadership and camaraderie experiences through JROTC enabled them to naturally create an atmosphere of team and unity. They wanted to learn and improve themselves and bring others along.

The third aspect was the dedication of the entire team (e.g., instructors, Air Force colleagues, mentors, invited speakers, and those who helped administer the project). Everyone was very focused on bringing a quality program to a diverse group of cadets. There were a lot of discussions about how to shape the program so it enabled all students to learn, from recruitment and acceptance into the program all the way to the "graduation".

Monica

Hi Brian, Thank you for your questions. When we refer to the "capacity" aspects of the Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience framework as it applies to the JROTC-CS Demonstration Project, we're talking about whether all professionals and facilities around the cadet learning have capacity to provide the high quality CS and Cybersecurity learning experience. In example, do the JROTC Instructors have a high level of guidance capacity to serve as tech career and course selection advisors to the cadets they serve? Do the teachers working in the 30 schools that serve the cadets have adequate capacity through high quality professional learning opportunities to deliver the CS course content? Do the administrators (principals) in these schools have capacity to offer support to these CS teachers, appropriate evaluation of instruction for these CS teachers, and supportive teacher leadership networks to continuously improve instruction?

Great question! CAPE is actually an across-the-board framework to consider capacity to offer CS education all the way through the experiences of the students. As part of the latter, student self-efficacy, beliefs/attitudes, content knowledge, and intent to pursue additional courses, post-high school learning opportunities, and careers are all set to be measured. By measuring and studying the data from this broad of a perspective, we can begin to understand unique challenges that schools face in delivering an equity-based CS education and barriers that students from various subgroups face. 

Exactly. We're actually looking at both--the impact on the cadets involved, but also how it impacts the schools and how students who are not cadets become more engaged in computer science and cybersecurity. We're very excited about how this can impact underserved schools and students. Because every student does deserve the opportunity to learn computer science.