Promoting Talents for Computer Science

Sara Hinterplattner

1 a

, Barbara Sabitzer

1 b

, Heike Demarle-Meusel

1 c

and Hanspeter M

ossenb

ock

2 d

Department of STEM Education, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria

Institute for Systems Software, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria

Keywords:

Honors Education, Talents Promotion, Computational Thinking, STEM, Interdisciplinary Project-based

Learning, Peer-tutoring.

Abstract:

In the ﬁeld of computer science there is a lack of qualiﬁed staff. Hence, more talents are needed, and uni-

versities try to attract students by launching different programs. The Johannes Kepler University Linz is very

engaged in talent promotion and offers programs for all age groups from preschool up to higher education.

The goal of these programs is to support gifted students throughout the grades in computer science as well

as in their personal development. For this purpose, the students are challenged with creative interdisciplinary

problem-based projects, all in connection with computer science. To achieve this goal all programs are based

on the three pillars of honors education: creating community, enhancing academic competence and offering

bounded freedom. In this paper we give an overview of all talent programs at the Johannes Kepler University

Linz for different levels of education, some of them already proven and others in their ﬁrst year respectively

in their pilot phase with some unique selling points. We describe the three pillars of honors education applied

in the activities as well as the planned evaluation.

1 INTRODUCTION

Talents promotion is essential in general, but espe-

cially in the ﬁeld of computer science where a grow-

ing lack of qualiﬁed staff can be observed (Denning

and Gordon, 2015), (Gershkoff, 2015), (Husing and

Korte, 2010). Hence all activities and programs that

attract students to computer science and help to ﬁnd

qualiﬁed staff in higher education are welcome. For

this purpose universities have to make major efforts to

recruit students. To achieve this aim, activities have

to be designed with an out-of-the-box approach and

should not only focus on university students. It is im-

portant to start as early as possible because in primary

education the interests of children are developed and

can therefore be more easily inﬂuenced (Mittermeir

et al., 2010), (K

oster et al., 2008). Long-term offers

have the beneﬁt that the programs can build on each

other and the students are able to create a stronger

bond with the university. It is crucial to design the

contents tailored to the claims of the speciﬁc target

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9601-433X

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1304-6863

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4897-757X

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7706-7308

group, with the focus on promoting interest and in-

creasing competences. As important as the content is

the underlying didactic concept to impart knowledge.

All the different programs presented below underlie

one didactic concept, which is established in the ﬁeld

of talent promotion. This article gives an overview of

the efforts of the Johannes Kepler University Linz to

promote gifted students in the ﬁeld of computer sci-

ence.

2 RELATED WORK

Gifted students differ from other students in their high

possession and use of untrained and spontaneously

expressed natural abilities. Gagn

e deﬁnes this high

possession to a degree that places the gifted students

as the top 10 per cent of their age peers (Gagn

2004). But the possession does not lead necessarily

to excellence. Other factors like support and fostering

are needed to unfold the potential of gifted students

(Neubauer and Stern, 2007), (Ziegler, 2005). There-

fore, talent development is needed to transform the

natural outstanding abilities into outstanding knowl-

edge and skills.

Hinterplattner, S., Sabitzer, B., Demarle-Meusel, H. and Mössenböck, H.

Promoting Talents for Computer Science.

DOI: 10.5220/0007764305570564

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 557-564

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

557

The beneﬁts of talent development programs start

in the early years of the students. Research shows

that highly gifted students in primary school report

several advantages of their gifted programs including

increased learning and more interesting work (Moon

et al., 2002). That leads us to the assumption that the

talent development programs at the Johannes Kepler

University Linz should start in primary school if not

even in preschool.

The core of a talent development program is an en-

riched curriculum or training program. The reason for

doing so is that gifted students need a different cur-

riculum pace and difﬁculty level than average learn-

ers. These curricula should provide regular learn-

ing, the practice of activities and advanced learning

activities (Berger, 1991), (Gagn

e, 2010). These in-

clude continuous and progressively challenging learn-

ing opportunities and environments in speciﬁc ar-

eas of talents. If there is an absence of these chal-

lenges in the educational environment it would lead

to a negative impact on students’ affect and cogni-

tion (Brighton et al., 2015), (Kulik and Kulik, 1992),

(Rogers, 2007). This can cause boredom, under-

achievement and school dropout (Piske et al., 2016),

(Maroldo, 1986), (Robinson, 1975), (Wasson, 1981).

Besides, there will be disadvantages in the learning

situation like slow learning pace in the classroom,

low academic challenge and repetition (Adams-Byers

et al., 2004).

To prevent these situations talent development

programs need more depth, more connections and

more applied learning, more space for creative un-

folding, more attention to students’ individual passion

and interests. This leads us to the key components

of honors pedagogy, the so-called 3 pillars of hon-

ors education: creating community, enhancing aca-

demic competence and offering freedom (Wolfens-

berger, 2012).

All children need to feel connected to others to de-

velop in a good way (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Contrar-

ily to the common opinion this applies also for gifted

students who want to have normal social interaction

with others (Coleman et al., 2015). Therefore, creat-

ing a community in the honors group sounds reason-

able. This includes not only the community among

the students, also a constructive and inspiring rela-

tionship between the teachers and the students is nec-

essary (Wolfensberger, 2012).

Enhancing academic competence is of course part

of a successful talent development program. This

includes multi- and interdisciplinary thinking, multi-

ple perspectives, scholarly teaching, academic depth,

involvement in research, challenging learning tasks,

difﬁculty and acceleration. (Wolfensberger, 2012)

The opportunity to work independently is impor-

tant for gifted students (Rogers, 2007). But there has

to be a framework so that they don’t get lost. Hence,

offering bounded freedom for the students is neces-

sary for a successful program. This includes ﬂexi-

bility, allowing for self-regulation, openness, innova-

tive teaching, experimentation, fun, professionalism,

novice relationship and challenge.

All these aspects were considered in the talent de-

velopment programs at the Johannes Kepler Univer-

sity Linz.

3 PROMOTING TALENTS FOR

COMPUTER SCIENCE

3.1 CS Talents Promotion in Upper

Austria

With the aim of implementing a sustainable talents

promotion in the ﬁeld of computer science across all

ages a very fruitful cooperation has been initiated in

Upper Austria in 2017 between the association Tal-

ente Ober

osterreich (Talents Upper Austria), shortly

Talente O

O, and the new COOL Lab at the Johannes

Kepler University Linz. Talente O

O is an associa-

tion that aims at promoting highly gifted children and

adolescents in different ﬁelds, mainly in the STEM

subjects (Talente Ober

osterreich, 2019). The COOL

Lab is a teaching-learning lab that aims at fostering

computational thinking and digital literacy for differ-

ent target groups in the educational ﬁeld as well as

attracting the participants for computer science (Sab-

itzer et al., 2018).

The programs, courses, workshops and clubs at

the Johannes Kepler University Linz reach gifted and

interested children and adolescents beginning at the

age of four years up to students of bachelor and mas-

ter level. The main aims of the COOL Lab are (1) ris-

ing interest for computer science and STEM in chil-

dren and adolescents of all ages, (2) bringing compu-

tational thinking and digital literacy to a broad audi-

ence, as well as (3) attracting highly gifted children

to computer science and motivating them for further

studies and/or work in this ﬁeld. In this paper we fo-

cus on the latter one and describe current programs

for high-ﬂyers of all ages offered by the Johannes Ke-

pler University Linz, especially by the COOL Lab.

Some of them are developed and accomplished to-

gether with Talente O

O, some were already developed

before and only implemented in this cooperation. The

following section gives an overview of the programs

and their contents.

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Table 1: Programs for Gifted Students - Overview

Program PreS PE SE1 SE2 HE

Informatics Lab x x x x

Mini Talents Club x

Mini:Mints x x

Talents Club x

Cyber Tutoring x x x

Tutor training (x) x x x

COOL Internships x x

Young Computer Scientists x

Head Start x

JKU Honors x

Student researcher x x x x

PreS = Preschool, PE = Primary Education, SE1 = Lower Secondary

Education, SE2 = Higher Secondary Education, HE = Higher Education

3.2 Best Practice Programs of the JKU

COOL Lab

In order to give an overview of the talent promotion

programs at the Johannes Kepler University Linz they

are listed in Table 1 including the corresponding age

groups. Aims and contents of the different programs

are described in the following paragraphs.

3.2.1 Preschool and Primary School

As already mentioned, for rising interest in children

it is important to start as early as possible. For chil-

dren in kindergarten, preschool and primary school

we offer special programs that follow the concept of

Informatics - A Child’s Play?!, a project (Sabitzer

et al., 2014) that in part builds on Computer Sci-

ence Unplugged (Bell et al., 2009) and Informatik er-

Leben (Experiencing Informatics) (Bischof and Sab-

itzer, 2011): Computer science concepts are presented

in a playful way by using games, animations and

hands-on materials and activities to train computa-

tional thinking.

The Informatics Lab (Pasterk et al., 2016) is the

chronologically oldest program, which has already

been developed in 2013 by one of the authors at her

previous university. (xxx, 2016) Now it is part of the

COOL Lab and can be visited every two weeks by ev-

eryone beginning at the age of four years. For highly

gifted children it is further the basis for other COOL

Lab activities and programs like the COOL Talents

Club and the Mini Talents Club as well as the new

tutor training. In this laboratory every visitor can

discover different computer science concepts and can

practice basic computational thinking through activi-

ties like the bee-dance or treasure hunt.

The Mini Talents Club for highly gifted children

from seven to ten years is a cooperation between the

Johannes Kepler University Linz and Talente O

O. It

takes place every two weeks in the COOL Lab and

builds on at least one visit to the Informatics Lab,

but goes further and integrates topics of all STEM

subjects. The idea is to use computer science con-

cepts and techniques in order to learn and elaborate

STEM contents, e.g. visualizing the ingredients and

procedure of a chemical experiment by using class

and activity diagrams as a sort of advance organizers.

Depending on age, competences and interests of the

children, they invent and develop new and innovative

products, e.g. a LED monster.

At the moment there are 21 children and two ad-

visors, who meet in the COOL Lab every second

week to discuss different topics. First, the young re-

searchers choose several topics out of a pool covering

all natural science (STEM) subjects taught at school.

These topics are introduced by lecturers, which are

teachers of the respective subjects. Furthermore, stu-

dents of the Johannes Kepler University Linz assist

the children in understanding the assignments.

The new program Mini:MINTs starts in summer

2019 in cooperation with kidsversity, the kindergarten

for the children of the staff and students of the Jo-

hannes Kepler University Linz. In a ﬁrst step, the

kindergarten teachers participate in the Informatics

Lab and discover concepts appropriate for ”their”

children, like sorting with Lego bricks, algorithms

in natural language, coding with Ozobots, modeling

with pictures as well as logic and simple truth tables

ﬁlled in with green checks and red crosses (instead of

1 and 0). Afterwards, COOL Lab trainers give work-

shops for the children, where the kindergarten teach-

ers already give input and/or support the children in

Promoting Talents for Computer Science

559

their tasks. After this phase of ”learning by doing” the

teachers should be ready to continue working without

further support and practicing computational think-

ing.

3.2.2 Secondary School

Most of the programs at the Johannes Kepler Univer-

sity Linz are offered for students of secondary educa-

tion (grades 5-13) with a strong focus on lower sec-

ondary schools (grades 5-8), where basic digital edu-

cation including computational thinking is obligatory

in Austria since 2018. The COOL Talents Club is a

cross-curricular learning lab for highly gifted students

from grade ﬁve to eight, who are interested in STEM

topics. Like the Mini Talents Club the COOL Talents

Club has been developed by the COOL Lab team and

is offered every two weeks in cooperation with Tal-

ente O

O. The aim of this course is fostering talents in

the ﬁeld of STEM with a strong focus on IT and com-

puter science. The children work on different projects

around topics of different ﬁelds and use technologies

as well as computer science concepts like modeling in

order to solve tasks and develop innovative products.

The topic of the ﬁrst Talents Club was “wearable tech-

nology”, the current is under the motto “useful and

intelligent objects”.

The program Cyber Tutoring is proposed by Tal-

ente O

O and is especially aimed at girls between 13

and 16 years, who are supervised over two years by

women in higher positions in the ﬁeld of STEM. All

in all, there are 13 girls in the program that started in

autumn 2018 and six of them are supervised by the

COOL Lab team. The girls are involved in research

projects of the department, act after an introduction

as peer tutors in the Informatics Lab, develop their

own projects and products, as well as participate in

the new tutor training for basic digital education.

The Tutor Training starts in March 2019 and is

open for gifted students from 12 years on. They get an

introduction into topics of computer science as well as

pedagogy in order to be able to teach basic computa-

tional thinking to children and teachers of their own

schools. The training is divided into three input units

at the university and two practice phases. During this

time the prospective tutors already give workshops in

their schools, supported online or by phone by COOL

Lab trainers.

The COOL Internships are dedicated to the work

in the COOL Lab, which can regard different subjects

and (research) ﬁelds depending mostly on the inter-

ests and competences of the students. The internships

are offered for students of higher secondary schools

(beginning at the age of 15). These internships in-

clude the work in interdisciplinary (research) projects

together with COOL Lab trainers and scientists, con-

ducting individual projects e.g. for the A-level exam

in a vocational high school, activities with children

in the Informatics Lab or the Talent Clubs described

above or even writing (pre-)scientiﬁc papers or theses

together with or under supervision of scientists. The

students can take part in these internships for a total of

120 hours in 4 weeks during their summer holidays or

even work part-time during the school year when their

schedule allows it.

3.3 Best Practice in Computer Science

3.3.1 Young Computer Scientists

The Young Computer Scientists program is part of the

Young Scientists initiative that was launched in 2012

to get a larger number of gifted high-school students

interested in STEM studies (Johannes Kepler Univer-

sity Linz, 2019b). Young Scientists is a cooperation

between the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Talente

O, and the Upper Austrian Chamber of Commerce.

More than 100 students participate in this program

each year, about 20 of them in the Computer Science

branch.

The Young Computer Scientists program consists

of six hands-on workshops on various topics of Com-

puter Science, as well as an optional summer intern-

ship at renowned local IT companies or at the COOL

Lab. The topics of the workshops range from game

programming to internet security, deep learning, si-

mulation, computer graphics, and signal processing.

3.3.2 HeadStart@Informatics

Recently, the Department of Computer Science at the

Johannes Kepler University Linz has implemented

various measures to attract young people to study

Computer Science. These measures have more than

doubled the number of new students in the last 5

years.

One of the latest measures at the Johannes Ke-

pler University Linz is a program called Head-

Start@Informatics, which allows gifted students in

their ﬁnal two years of higher secondary schools to

attend selected courses of the Computer Science Ba-

chelor’s program (Johannes Kepler University Linz,

2019a). They are then enrolled as extraordinary

students and are entitled to attend one introductory

course per semester. The following courses can be

attended:

• Introduction to Digital Circuits

• Introduction to Programming

• Introduction to Databases

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560

These are the regular courses that are also taken

by full-time students so that the pupils get a good un-

derstanding of what it means to study Computer Sci-

ence. The exams are later credited when the pupils

start their proper studies. Thus, they gain a head start

over students starting from scratch.

During this time, the high school students are ex-

empted from tuition fees, which is made possible by

a cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Education

and the

OZBF (Austrian Research and Support Centre

for the Gifted and Talented).

HeadStart@Informatics offers a number of ad-

vantages: Students get to know the basics of com-

puter science at an academic level, which is usually

well beyond what they learn in school. For motivated

students this is an excellent opportunity to quench

their thirst for knowledge and to experience what

Computer Science is all about. They can thus better

decide whether Computer Science is the right thing

for them. If they decide to continue with Computer

Science, their regular start of studies will be much

smoother than without this experience, thus reducing

the dropout rate. Last but not least, it is motivating to

be a university student already at the age of 17.

For the university, the advantage of Head-

Start@Informatics is that more young people are

attracted to studying Computer Science, which in-

creases the number of students in this highly sought-

after ﬁeld. Another advantage is that the Johannes Ke-

pler University Linz is thus curbing the migration of

young people to other places of study, a problem that

many regional universities have compared to larger

universities. Those who study elsewhere usually do

not return to their home area when they reach out for

a job later, which has a negative impact on the labor

force in the region.

3.4 JKU Honors Program

The JKU Honors Program is designed for gifted stu-

dents at the Johannes Kepler University Linz who

have the motivation and the ability to do more than

a regular program can offer. This should include

by deﬁnition academic challenges but also aspects to

broaden their personal development and their interdis-

ciplinary thinking (Clark and Zubizarreta, 2008).

The participants receive individual support and

soft skills training, gain experience and competencies

for scientiﬁc work and research, develop their creativ-

ity, carry out individual projects and deepen their ar-

eas of expertise and complementary subject areas to

broaden their horizons. They have the opportunity to

interact with other participants and get in touch with

top executives at the Johannes Kepler University Linz

who will talk about their research, their career and

their person.

Besides their own scientiﬁc training the stu-

dents also support younger gifted students with their

projects. One example of this tutoring is the Chil-

dren’s Congress at the Johannes Kepler University

Linz. In this annual event participating children can

slip into the role of researchers and present the re-

sults of their projects accomplished by the Honors

students. The projects stand out because of their cre-

ative ways of implementing cross-curricular computa-

tional thinking. Besides their academic competence,

the Honors students have to support the children by

showing them how to get the best out of their gifted-

ness. This collaboration is described as very inspiring

and motivating from both sides.

With this program, the Johannes Kepler Univer-

sity Linz makes a major contribution to the promo-

tion of talent at universities and supports particularly

gifted students in their development.

Student Researchers can do research projects or

participate in projects in all levels of education, even

primary schools. Together with the COOL Lab team

and scientists - and in the case of the Children’s

Congress (xxx, 2018) also with their teachers and

teacher students - children and adolescents of all the

talent programs of the Johannes Kepler University

Linz or partner schools pose research questions, try to

solve them, report on their projects and present them

as well as the developed products and gained results

at an appropriate event.

4 THE 3 PILLARS OF HONORS

EDUCATION

In the development of the programs the 3 pillars of

honors education where taken into account.

4.1 Creating Community

In the programs, creating a community is an impor-

tant issue. The students often work in groups and

are in active exchange with their teachers or men-

tors. For communication common platforms are used

where new ideas, projects or problems can be dis-

cussed. The ﬁrst attempts have started to interconnect

the individual programs. The Honors students work in

several projects with younger gifted students and sup-

port them. Also in the tutor programs younger gifted

students are encouraged by the older gifted students.

In order to make the talents program visible to

other students, there are public events at the end of

all programs. There the results of the projects, the

Promoting Talents for Computer Science

561

student’s experiences and their gained knowledge are

presented to parents and peers. Outstanding achieve-

ments will be rewarded in the course of these events.

4.2 Enhancing Academic Competence

The broadening of the own academic competence is

of course a reason why the gifted students want to

participate in the programs. In every program the

questions are raised ”What do we learn in this pro-

gram?” or ”What do we get out of this program?”.

And the answers to these questions include own re-

search and interdisciplinarity. Often students are fo-

cused on a speciﬁc subject, because they are used to

it from school. But in the gifted programs at the Jo-

hannes Kepler University Linz it is not enough to be

good in one domain, the creativity and the out-of-the-

box thinking is fostered. The students participate in

projects on different and interdisciplinary subjects to

ensure a higher competence in important subjects or

dimensions of being a gifted students with the abil-

ity to change the profession that they are in. Topics

like innovation and entrepreneurship, networking or

project management prepare the students for their fur-

ther life. Combined with skills in computer science

like programming or computational thinking, the stu-

dents get a solid and important grounding for projects

even in disciplines other than computer science.

The own research is a big part of every project.

The students are challenged with real-world prob-

lems in STEM ﬁelds and demanded a variety of ap-

proaches. Often students have to start with a lot of

research, doing many experiments and ﬁnally cre-

ate their own products that are presented at the ﬁnal

events (Hinterplattner and Sabitzer, 2018).

4.3 Offering Freedom

In every program the students get their freedom to

work on their interests in a speciﬁc framework. This

approach is called bounded freedom. As mentioned

before, this should be part of every gifted program,

because the gifted students want to develop their own

ideas. The teachers or mentors will often deﬁne tasks

or highlight problems in existing solutions, making it

the students’ task to improve or implement solutions

to solve these challenges. In every project the gifted

students bring their own ideas and experiences in and

work together in groups and develop a learning space,

where collaboration and peer to peer sparing and eval-

uation becomes a center stone for the student’s own

work. This allows the students a work process with

a lot more inspiration, and a faster feedback on ideas

and possibilities for their personal projects. This also

creates a strong sense of community, giving the stu-

dents a safety net, allowing them to reach for higher

goals with their projects.

Working on these individual projects where there

is no ﬁxed solution or at least no ﬁxed way to get to a

solution gives a student a lot of room to try out skills

and make precious experiences.

5 EVALUATION

It is crucial to evaluate the offers set by the Johannes

Kepler University Linz to foster gifted students. As

described above, most of the offers are very recent.

That gave us the opportunity to coordinate the design

of the target-group-speciﬁc offers. Every effort set

pursues three main goals: (1) to promote talents (2) to

increase interest in computer science and (3) to foster

youth development at the Johannes Kepler University

Linz. Thus the evaluation concept is balanced with

these three evaluation goals.

Promoting talents: One focus lies on the three

pillars of honors education: creating community, en-

hancing academic competence and offering freedom.

For this, the structure of the offers is matched up

with these three pillars. The task of the evalua-

tion will concentrate on the quality of implementa-

tion. A second focus is on the interdisciplinary work

and projects on interdisciplinary themes. All pro-

grams force problem-based learning and interdisci-

plinary problem-solving to foster relevant 21st cen-

tury skills. To evaluate these aims, the concepts and

set framework conditions will be reviewed by experts

from the university.

Increasing interest in computer science: A way to

increase interest in one subject is to create the pos-

sibility to get in touch with the topic. The contents

of all offers are entangled with computational think-

ing, with the aims to adjust the image of computer

science within the target groups and to increase the

knowledge of it. Some offers of the university will

not only be reserved for gifted students, but for all in-

terested students, with the aim of fostering interest in

computer science. To evaluate this we will analyse

the products developed by the students and conduct a

questionnaire survey.

Fostering youth development : A quantitative anal-

ysis will be set to answer the question, if the offers

bind students to the university and whether the offer

is accepted or not. In the second case, results of the

formative evaluation will be important to intervene at

an early stage.

Experiences: Having an overview of the current

talents promotion activities at the Johannes Kepler

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562

University Linz respectively analyzing the status-quo

including the three pillars of education, is the ba-

sis for the current work at the Johannes Kepler Uni-

versity Linz: the development of an overall concept

of a seamless talents promotion in computer science

across all age groups and educational levels. The

underlying didactic framework is COOL Informat-

ics, the ﬂexible and ”brain-based” teaching approach

of the COOL Lab of the Johannes Kepler University

Linz. With this concept and its 4 principles - discov-

ery, cooperation, individuality and activity - we have

already gained some positive experiences in bache-

lor programming courses: we could reduce the drop-

out rate, close the usual gender-gap concerning the

performance, as well as increase the average learning

outcomes (Sabitzer and Pasterk, 2014). We are still at

an early stage in the development of the overall con-

cept, where we cannot present empirical results yet.

However, the positive feedback of the participating

students as well as their parents gained so far shows

that we are on the right way.

6 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

Talents promotion is essential especially in the ﬁeld of

computer science, where a growing lack of qualiﬁed

staff can be observed. There are already several activ-

ities for gifted students at the Johannes Kepler Uni-

versity Linz, in part developed and offered in cooper-

ation with Talente O

O. They allow us to reach chil-

dren and adolescents of all levels of education from

kindergarten up to university level. With this varied

and seamless talents promotion in computer science

we want to increase interest and attract more students,

especially females, for a further career in this ﬁeld.

We have already got some positive feedback from stu-

dents and parents, which shows that we are on the

right way. Currently, we are developing an overall

concept for a seamless talents promotion in computer

science, based on the three pillars of honors education

as well as on a common didactic framework: COOL

Informatics. The talents promotion at the Johannes

Kepler University Linz is already good and appreci-

ated. With the further development and application of

the planned overall concept, it may become a ﬂagship

for talents promotion in computer science for other

regions, too.

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