Design and Implementation of a Week-long, High School Curriculum Unit Integrating Physics and Computational Modeling

Abstract

Engaging students in computational modeling (CM) to explain natural scientific processes can help prepare pre-college students for STEM careers and lower boundaries to teaching computer science in pre-college schools. This study addresses the need for concise CM experiences that typical teachers can feasibly integrate into science instruction and are accessible to students from historically excluded STEM groups who have no programming experience. We describe the design and enactment of a one-week CM unit and report on its classroom feasibility, students' learning outcomes, and students' CM activities. We observed significant pretest/posttest gains indicating that the unit benefited students even after completing a typical course of study on kinematics. Two student vignettes illustrate how students' CM activities provided learning opportunities in physics and computational thinking.