CS Unplugged is a set of active learning activities designed to introduce fundamental computer science principles without the use of computers. The program has gained significant momentum in recent years, with proponents citing deep engagement and enjoyment benefits. With these benefits in mind, we initiated a one-year outreach program involving a local high school, using the CS Unplugged program as the foundation. To our disappointment, the results were at odds with our enthusiasm --- significantly. In this paper, we describe our approach to adapting the CS Unplugged materials for use at the high school level, present our experiences teaching it, and summarize the results of our evaluation.

We have shown that the CS Unplugged program we presented had, on average, no impact on student attitudes toward computer science or their perceived content understanding. We believe there are several causes for this result. First, based on our experience with presenting CS Unplugged activities to other groups, we believe high school students do not find kinesthetic activities of this kind as exciting as middle or elementary school students, such as the groups participating in [6–8]. Although we attempted to modify the activities to be more suitable for high school participants, we observed that these students seemed less motivated to participate than we had hoped. Second, the selected students were already in a computer science programming class. We felt they would be more interested in the activities. However, after reviewing the data and reflecting on our experiences with these students, we believe most of the students perceived themselves as “experienced programmers”and so may have been less interested in spending time learning these concepts. Last, most successful CS Unplugged-based programs were either summer workshops or after school programs. Participants in these programs tend to be self-selected, with a strong pre-existing interest.