Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coding Camp through the Analysis of a Follow-up Project

Initiatives to attract interest to software development are very popular, including coding camps for high schools. Camp's effectiveness is evaluated using different approaches: pre-and-post surveys usually analyze participant attitudes/interests in computing or self-efficacy; computing skills and learning are tested using surveys/tests, or by analyzing the final products. However, results on the camp's effectiveness are hardly generalizable due to the limited number of participants and the lack of repetition. Moreover, there is a lack of evaluation and evidence collected time after the end of the camp, to determine how participants capitalized on what they learned. To fill this gap, we organized a follow-up project to understand whether participants put in practice the foundational concepts and practices taught in one of our coding camps and recognized their impact on the characteristics of the delivered software product. Results show the camp's effectiveness in delivering technical foundations on basic aspects of Software Engineering, as well as concepts of product design and teamwork.