Introducing underrepresented high school students to software engineering: Using the micro:bit microcontroller to program connected autonomous cars

Outreach that considers underrepresented groups has become one particular push to increase participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math-related disciplines, with Computer Science and Software Engineering representing one particular domain. We describe our outreach programming employing the micro:bit microcontroller environment for hands-on software development and how students change their high-level domain knowledge and attitudes. We find that overall, students were gaining general knowledge and slight increases in their positive attitudes towards a computer science-related post-secondary education. We also find differences between incoming knowledge level groups and self-perception as well as performance differences. We also note a slight majority of students indicated that they liked our approach and that the utilization of the micro:bit microcontroller overall was worthwhile. Future iterations of our programming will utilize these findings and add additional data gathering efforts supplanting the current pre- and posttest instruments.