Launching Swiss Computer Science Education Week

Nora Escherle∗

nora.escherle@fhnw.chDorit Assaf∗

dorit.assaf@fhnw.chAshok Basawapatna∗

†

basawapatnaa@oldwestbury.eduCarmine Maiello∗

carmine.maiello@fhnw.chAlexander Repenning∗

alexander.repenning@fhnw.ch

ABSTRACTThe systemic introduction of computer science educationin federalist countries such as the United States, Germany,and Switzerland can be extremely difficult. The lack of topdown dissemination mechanisms makes it hard to scale upeven successful Computer Science Education strategies tonational levels, necessitating bottom up approaches. Highprofile initiatives such as Computer Science Education Week,including the Hour of Code tutorials, provide an alternateroute to reaching potentially large numbers of students, butin international contexts require proper adaptation to lo-cal languages and cultures. In 2014, Scalable Game DesignSwitzerland launched the Swiss computer science educationWeek featuring a multi-lingual “Frogger 3D” game creationactivity. Results show the power of this bottom up approachto help jump-start student exposure to computer science ina relatively short amount of time. The first Swiss ComputerScience Education Week reached 10,000 Swiss students, from21 out of 26 Swiss cantons, with qualitative feedback andquantitative retention data indicating a sustainable and en-joyable experience for students and teachers.

1. INTRODUCTIONWestern countries have transferred from production-centeredeconomies to innovation and knowledge driven ones withinthe last few decades. The emphasis lies on the contribu-tion of knowledge and innovation which are the dynamo ofthese economies. Only countries that are flexible enough tosuccessfully cope with this shift will stay competitive. Inthis paper we focus on the situation in Switzerland, whichcurrently has to go through a major reform in its educationsystem. In order to understand the challenges a school re-form is facing, we need to look at the special situation in this

∗School of Education, University of Applied Sciencesand Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), Windisch,Switzerland†SUNY Old Westbury, Dept. Mathematics, Computer &Information Science, Old Westbury, NY

country. The following sections give an overview of the eco-nomical, political and cultural aspects of the Swiss’ schoolsystem.

1.1 The lack of ICT skilled workforceThe availability of a technically skilled workforce for a smallexport-oriented economy like Switzerland is crucial to com-pete in a global market. A recent study [5] shows thatthe workforce of information and communication technology(ICT) related fields increased from 2009 to 2012 by 3.5%.The prognosis estimates a yearly increase of available ICTjobs of 2.5% until 2020. That means 72,500 ICT skilledhuman resources need to be recruited within an eight yearperiod. The study further predicts, that due to a continuinglow interest of students in pursuing a career in ICT relateddisciplines, Switzerland will be short of 25,000 skilled work-force in 2020. A reliable and sustainable strategy to bridgethe gap would be to educate people internally. This wouldrequire to motivate young people to increasingly pursue a ca-reer in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) re-lated disciplines. The reality shows, however, that the num-ber of STEM enrollments in tertiary education is constantlylow. The Swiss’ education system is challenged to improvethis situation. It is crucial to expose students to STEM disci-plines as early as possible. Fostering STEM skills constantlythroughout a child’s school career might lower the barriersand increase self-confidence and interest in these disciplines.This demands a joint effort of all parties involved – parents,teachers, schools, universities, politicians, members of theeconomy, and researchers.

1.2 The situation of Swiss K-12 CS educationComputer science is not a mandatory subject at any schoollevel in Switzerland. To present, ICT education in schoolsmainly stands for learning to use applications like MicrosoftOffice. There are, however, many innovative teachers thatteach topics beyond that, but all on own initiative. If astudent is exposed to computer science throughout his orher school career, it is simply by chance. There are also anumber of organizations that have been aiming at improv-ing computer science education (CSE) in K-12 education formany years. The largest one is the Hasler1 foundation. Forinstance, their initiative “Fit in IT”’2 just ended after 10years duration and 20 million Swiss Francs in funding. Gen-erally, any initiative aiming at introducing computer science

1http://www.haslerstiftung.ch2http://www.fit-in-it.ch

in K-12 education in Switzerland is funded by associations,foundations, or companies (e.g. Hasler, SVIA3, IngCH4).They are organizing project weeks in schools, conductingcompetitions (e.g. Informatik Biber5, Swiss Olympiad inInformatics6), or offer teacher training. Regarding CSE ini-tiatives on the level of the Swiss state, it is important tomention the “Lehrplan 21”7, a new common curriculum forcompulsory education composed by a committee of approx.200 people who worked on it for 8 years. It importantly in-cludes the focus on the learning of competences as opposedto that of pure content and the introduction of CS as a newdiscipline. It was developed in order to implement article64 of the Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation,stating that the compulsory school system should be har-monized8. Also, the Federal Council has defined CSE as animportant measure to achieve the goal of establishing an in-formation society in Switzerland [1]. The implementation of“Lehrplan 21” proves to be highly difficult, however.

It might not be obvious at first that Switzerland, with a pop-ulation of eight million and located in the center of Europe isunique in many ways, which brings about both great chancesand challenges. It is a federal multiparty republic consistingof 26 cantons and having four official national languages:German, French, Italian and Romansh (native speakers ofthis language are extremely few, however, and they all learnand speak German). The direct democracy and the state’shighly federalist characteristic is deeply rooted in the soci-ety and influences all aspects of life. All cantons’ educationsystems differ considerably from one another, especially forcompulsory education, which is kindergarten, primary, andlower secondary school (total duration of approx. 11 years).A family with school-aged children moving to another can-ton likely faces a different school system and curriculum.Differences might include the age when compulsory schoolstarts, foreign languages taught, and textbooks used in class.This is striking given the small size of the country. As thename “Lehrplan 21” implies, it only targets the 21 German-speaking cantons. Also, each canton will decide individually,when and how it will implement the new common curricu-lum. Already half of the 21 cantons are announcing majoropposition against Lehrplan 21. ICT topics such as Mi-crosoft Office that are currently taught in schools are seen asuseful for a professional career, whereas programming andhighly specialized computer science topics are rather per-ceived as academic skills. Less than 30% of all studentswill pursue a tertiary education, so why should we teachsomething that academic to everyone? When speaking ofprogramming in schools we often hear from teachers, “well,that’s definitely something interesting to foster gifted stu-dents”.

To summarize, Switzerland needs to educate more skilledworkforce in STEM related disciplines. The economy ispushing for that, so does the Federal Council. In a highlyfederalist country, however, a school reform cannot be achieved

3http://svia-ssie-ssii.ch4http://ingch.ch/5http://informatik-biber.ch/6http://www.soi.ch/7https://www.lehrplan.ch/8https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19995395/index.html#a62

with a top-down approach, i.e. by introducing bills. Eachcanton is autonomous, and the final decision is often madeby a popular vote. We need to consider the culture of theparents, students, and teachers. Computer science is per-ceived as something academic, which is often consideredsuitable for gifted students only. In this paper we present anattempt to introduce a broad number of students in Switzer-land to programming and computational thinking (CT) bylaunching Swiss Computer Science Education Week (CS EdWeek). CT was famously declared “a fundamental skillfor everyone, not just for computer scientists” by JeannetteMarie Wing [7]. Following Wing, many others in the fieldhave acknowledged the relevance of CT for “nearly all disci-plines, both in the sciences and the humanities” [4], describ-ing it as “a digital age skill for everyone” [2].

Taking into account the specificities of the Swiss educationsystem, we chose a bottom-up approach to launching SwissCS Ed Week. By addressing the teachers personally and bypartnering up with trusted institutions, we could convincemany of them to join the event and consequently, exposea large number of students to programming. We will nowdescribe how we adapted an international event such as CSEd Week to the local circumstances in Switzerland and howwe managed to reach 10,000 students within only a monthlead time.

2. OUR APPROACH TO LAUNCH SWISSCSEDWEEK

Scalable Game Design Switzerland (SGDS) is located at theschool of education of the University of Applied Sciences andArts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). It is the institu-tion responsible for certified teacher training in northwesternSwitzerland. Drawing on comprehensive experiences madein the U.S. SGD project, SGDS aims at exposing studentsto STEM and computational thinking through motivatinggame and simulation design activities. To this end, SGDSwitzerland holds teacher training workshops, project work-shops for students, develops a curriculum for teacher train-ing to be implemented in 2017, and supports the implemen-tation of the Lehrplan 21 among other things. As mentionedabove, SGDS launched Swiss CSEdWeek with an activityaimed at motivating Swiss students and teachers serving asan introduction to further computer science classroom ac-tivities. Notably, Swiss CSEdWeek was launched within fiveweeks from the time of its inception to students program-ming the activity over the week of December 8–14, 2014.In that highly limited amount of time, several crucial fac-tors had to be tackled in order to ensure the success of thelaunch.

2.1 The ActivityThe Scalable Game Design CSEdWeek activity is an HTML5browser based exercise wherein users program the 80’s ar-cade game Frogger in AgentCubes Online. Designed by theScalable Game Design project at the University of Colorado,it had already been successfully introduced in the U.S. dur-ing the CSEdWeek 2013 as one of the Hour of Code ac-tivities, being used by 250,000 students in only one week[6][3]. AgentCubes Online is a browser based visual pro-gramming tool which enables users to build their own gamesand simulations. The tool implements the pedagogical ap-

Figure 1: AgentCubes Online CSEdWeek activitywith the “Agent Gallery” listing in-game characterscreated by the user (1), the“Conditions”-palette (2),the “Actions”-palette (3), and the “Behavior” edi-tor window where students create behavior rules forcharacters by combining conditions and actions (4),the embedded instruction video (5), and the indexedlist of the video’s contents (6).

proach of a strong correlation between student motivationresulting from the experience of ownership and the opportu-nity of being creative on the one hand and learning progresson the other hand [6]. Students can create their own in-dividual 3D-characters called “Agents” from scratch withthe built-in graphics editor and select their self-made char-acters listed in the “Agent Gallery” (Fig. 1, label 1) todesign their own virtual 3D-worlds. Users create in-gameinteractions between the characters by composing charac-ter behaviour rules. These rules consist of programmingblocks from the “Conditions”-palette (Fig 1, label 2) andthe “Actions”-palette (Fig. 1, label 3), which are assembledin the “Behaviour Editor” (Fig. 1, label 4) by drag-and-dropprogramming. Equipping AgentCubes Online with an em-bedded video tutorial in English, Spanish, German, Italian,and French (Fig. 1, label 5), the CSEdWeek activity en-ables students to build a complete Frogger game guided bythe tutorial’s step-by-step verbal and visual instructions9.The video itself is supplemented by an interactive table ofits contents consisting of indexed links that allow studentsto (re-)access instructions for each single programming step(Fig. 1, label 6). Students who follow the video tutorial willcomplete similar Frogger games consisting of identical rules.Figure 1 is a screenshot of this activity when the student hasprogrammed the frog-truck collision and the tutorial showshow to switch to first-person view. The 3D Frogger onlineCSEdWeek activity instruction guides students through thecreation of a game consisting of 215 lines of code. How-ever, this activity is open-ended as students are provided alink enabling them to return, modify, and add to their gamewhenever they please. As a result, student projects can be ofvarying program lengths with some students building simpleversions of Frogger while other students continue past theend of the video instruction, adding more interactions ontheir own.

2.2 Adapting the activity to the Swiss context9https://www.agentcubesonline.com/quickstart/

Switzerland is a highly federalist and multilingual coun-try, and this inherent structure presents some challenges tolaunching CSEdWeek in Switzerland. This section looks atthe modifications to the activity helping to increase its acces-sibility for teachers and students in Switzerland. All modifi-cations can roughly be placed into three categories: languagechallenges, recruitment challenges and support challenges.

1. Language Challenges. Apart from being politicallyhighly independent, each of the 26 distinct cantonsof Switzerland adopts one of three languages: Ger-man, French, and Italian (Romansh speaking peopleare usually also fluent in German). In order to launchthe CSEdWeek activity in Switzerland, the 3D Frog-ger activity depicted in Figure 1 had to be modified toincrease accessibility to Swiss students. The embed-ded instruction video (Label 5) and the indexed listof the video’s contents (Label 6) had to be translatedinto German, French, and Italian. The actual condi-tions and actions (Labels 2 and 3) were not translatedto keep consistency between the visual language envi-ronments. Instead, the program provided a tooltip inthe native language when their cursor hovered over agiven condition or action.

2. Recruitment Challenges. In analogy to SGD in theU.S., SGD had to develop partnerships in Switzerlandin order to recruit the greatest number of students pos-sible. These partnerships included the Hasler Founda-tion, SVIA (Schweizerischer Verein für Informatik inder Ausbildung), and SI (Schweizer Informatik Gesell-schaft), which are nationally renowned across cantonborders for their support of valuable education initia-tives. These organizations not only helped us signifi-cantly to spread the word, but also provided the thenunknown project with a high level of credibility, vouch-ing for its educational value. Other recruitment meansincluded inviting teachers individually to participate inour activity through sending out personal emails fromour home institution FHNW, attending computer sci-ence education events to hand out flyers and talk topeople directly, presenting to teachers at these events,workshops and radio broadcast spots.

3. Support Challenges. Even though the activity is self-contained, novice teachers had to be supported in do-ing it, for example, in case something went wrong withstudent projects. In the U.S., this support often takesthe form of teacher professional development or on-line wiki support. With that kind of training lackingin Switzerland, and the time constraints present, wehad to provide alternative ways of scaffolding to maketeaching accessible to teachers. A Swiss Scalable GameDesign wiki in German and French supplied teach-ers with an activity tutorial and guidelines on howto introduce the activity in the classroom. To allevi-ate teachers’ possible classroom management concerns,the activity website featured a FAQ section in Germanand French. Furthermore, comprehensive support wasprovided during the event. A staff of three people re-sponded to every query, providing an activity blog,daily email support, and a daily ten-hour phone lineto every teacher who decided to do the activity withtheir class.

Figure 2: Participation of 21 cantons in red, 168cities and villages in blue as circles in the 2014 SwissCSEdWeek Activity.

3. RESULTSDespite a very limited lead time and challenges outlinedabove, the Swiss CSEdWeek was launched on December 8–14, 2014. Qualitative data gathered included student ques-tionnaires and reports from teachers and optional registra-tion forms (primarily filled out by teachers). Quantitativedata included information gathered from Google analyticsby geotagging, which showed the locations from where theactivity’s website was being accessed to what extent. Fur-thermore, the analysis of Swiss student games provided in-formation about participant retention, i.e. how far studentsgot in the activity, how many of them completed the projector even continued programming above and beyond what theactivity required.

3.1 ReachThe 2014 Swiss CSE Week reached over 10,000 studentsfrom 168 cities and villages in 21 cantons. Informationfrom the registration forms indicates that a wide range ofschools participated in the event including primary, sec-ondary, district, trade and vocational schools. Figure 2shows the composite information with different gradationof red color representing the participation of cantons, anddifferent gradations of blue color representing the participa-tion of villages. More saturated colors and larger circles indi-cate higher participation. The cantons, sorted from high tolow participation were Zurich, St. Gallen, Aargau, Lucerne,Fribourg, Bern, Thurgau, Basel-Land, Neuchâtel, Geneva,Solothurn, Schaffhausen, Zug, Vaud, Basel-Stadt, Schwyz,Appenzell Innerrhoden, Graubünden, Ticino, Valais, Ap-penzell Ausserrhoden. The top five cities were Lucerne, St.Gallen, Baden, Zurich, and Buchs.

3.2 Qualitative data: testimonialsAsking teachers to add something brand new to their cur-riculum with very short notice might understandably bemet with skepticism. In this case, we were asking teach-ers to adopt a new activity with untested aspects, with onlyfew weeks of notice as part of the banner of CSEdWeek,which is not established yet in Switzerland. Therefore hav-ing partners with a well respected track record was crucial toovercome this initial teacher skepticism to the activity. Forexample, teachers indicated that our partnership with or-

ganizations like the SVIA was important for adopting theactivity in their classroom. Other reasons why teachersjoined included the perceived magnitude of the event andthe potential benefits in terms of curricular input as well aspotential integration as a practical activity in the contextof different subjects. Teacher and student testimonials in-dicated that teachers not only were able to implement theactivity in their classrooms successfully, but also revealedthat students enjoyed the activity.

One teacher, who participated with 97 students, spoke aboutthe ease of teaching this unit and the engagement of studentsindicating future activity use: “Everything worked perfectlyand we had great fun. Young people even forgot the break.Creativity knows no boundaries, there were so many differ-ent games, as it had learners. Good thing, I will definitely doagain next year”. Another teacher, who participated with 80pupils, also spoke to the motivation students had through-out the activity and beyond saying “It was really fun – evenafter 6 hours the kids were fully engaged!”. The followingquote from a female student describes a typical positive stu-dent experience of the activity which helped them overcometheir initial fear of programming: “I really liked the program-ming week. Even if [...] my hair was standing on edge [...]I was able to form a positive opinion on programming andrealized that it isn’t that difficult after all If it was up to mewe would have an activity like this again.”. The followinglast quote illustrates a typical negative student experiencewherein students were able to do the activity but were nofurther motivated to do subsequent activities: “I liked pro-gramming my own game a lot. I would love to keep workingon it for weeks! Sometimes [...] things that I programmeddidn’t work, and I had to look for the mistakes and solvethem, which I mostly managed to do. However, even thoughI liked it, I also know now that I don’t want a job later whereI have to sit in front of the computer all the time.”

Overall these quotes speak to the sustainability of the activ-ity as teachers felt comfortable giving the activity in class,students were able to not only complete the activity butwere motivated and engaged, and both students and teach-ers expressed interest in being part of CSEdWeek 2015.

3.3 Quantitative data: retentionTo assess the efficacy of the activity’s adaptation for use inSwitzerland, we used participant retention as an evaluationinstrument. Retention in this case meant how long a studentremained with the activity before stopping. As explainedabove, the CSEdWeek Frogger video tutorial provides step-by-step instructions that leads to students building gameswith the same rules and lines of code. Each programmingstep taught by the tutorial directly correlates to a knownand consistent set of lines of codes in student projects. Be-cause of the direct relationship between the steps of taughtby the tutorial and the actual lines of code that students cre-ate, the number of lines of code correlates directly to howlong a student was retained in the activity. The completetutorial-guided Frogger activity consists of 215 lines of codein AgentCubes which we calculate by analyzing the XMLfile that represents each agent’s behavior. In past classroomScalable Game Design observations, students usually get toa program length of around 46 or 59 within an hour. In theCSEdWeek activity these two lengths correspond to the Frog

moving in all four directions, at a program length of 46, andthe win state of the game wherein the player wins if the frogjumps on a target at the end of the level, at a program lengthof 59. Quantitative website data show that over 10,000 stu-dents accessed the activity and started their own projects bycreating 3D characters and worlds. Of these, 2,116 studentprojects comprised one or more lines of code, which we anal-ysed in terms of retention. Starting at 100% at the programlength of 1, data shows that we lose students as their num-bers drop off at each program length greater than 1. Thegeneral trend of the retention follows a negative exponentialcurve (r−squared = 0.933;F (1, 384) = 5375, 714, p < 0.01).This implies that as students proceeded through the stepsof the activity, the rate at which students decided to ceaseparticipation decreased. Furthermore, the retention data in-dicates several points where many students tend to discon-tinue the activity, specifically at the program lengths of 45and 59 indicated above. The usual context for CSEdWeekactivities is that students will complete an hour of code intheir classrooms. If a teacher budgeted exactly one hourfor this exercise, the average of 56 lines of code is the ap-proximate point students will reach before discontinuing theactivity. Retention data also shows that a large percentageof participants who programmed at least 1 line of code con-tinued significantly beyond one hour writing more than 59lines of code, with 13.5% of them completing a full Froggergame comprising 215 lines of code.

4. DISCUSSIONThe first Swiss CSEdWeek can justly be called a success,considering not only the students’ retention during the weekbut also the event’s sustainability beyond the activity itself.Our hope is that future events like this have the power ofovercoming skepticism towards CSE. In order to make thiscome true, however, we have to look closely at all the factorswe think were crucial to the success of the event on the onehand and aspects that hint at shortcomings in the activityand our implementation strategy, on the other hand. Thiswill enable us to become aware of mandatory adjustments,which, when implemented, might work towards the realiza-tion of our hopes. In general, our experiences have confirmedthe initial assumption that the greatest challenge to our en-deavor is the federalist structure of the Swiss state, thatmost other challenges result from this structure and thatthe most effective way to cope with these challenges is thepartnering with nationally trusted organizations combinedwith the bottom up approach. Most of our adjustments willrelate directly to the federalist challenge by further refin-ing and broadening the bottom up approach. This sectionprovides an overview of potential reasons for the success-ful launching of the Swiss CSEdWeek, the assumed short-comings of our implementation strategy, and, on the basisof that, the strategy adjustments for the Swiss CSEdWeek2015.

4.1 Language challengesCatering to the specific language affordances in Switzerlandwas of the essence for enlisting as much as 10,000 students ina multilingual context. This not only relates to the activity’stranslation into German, French and Italian, including thevideo tutorial and the tooltips, but also to providing addi-tional information, teaching guidelines and the FAQ sectionin both German and French.

Shortcomings: While by far the great majority of partici-pants were located in the German-speaking part of Switzer-land, indicating the usefulness of the activity’s German lan-guage adaptation, the German-speaking cantons Obwalden,Nidwalden, Schwyz and Glarus of central Switzerland hadvery few to no participants. Similarly, although the activitywas available in Italian long before the actual event, par-ticipation in the Italian speaking canton Ticino was verylow. In contrast, although the activity’s French version wasprovided only three days after the beginning of the CSEd-Week, a considerable number of French speaking studentsparticipated in the activity.

Adjustments: While the Italian version of the activity itselfhad been ready before the event, there were no additionalinformation, teaching guidelines and FAQ sections like inGerman and French. Also, we had neither Italian nor Frenchversions of the event’s flyer. In order to reach more teachersand students in Switzerland during the next CSEdWeek, es-pecially in the Italian-speaking canton, we need to do evengreater justice to the multilingual affordances and specif-ically cater to the needs of Italian-speaking teachers andstudents. In addition to providing a multilingual version ofthe activity itself we will therefore have all promotion andinformation material as well as teaching guidelines and FAQsections in all three languages and also much earlier.

4.2 Recruitment challengesOn the basis of individual statements made by teachers, itappears that a main reason for their participation was es-sentially related to the matter of credibility: Apparently itwas important, on the one hand, that organizations like theSVIA supported and advertised the activity vouching for itseducational value. On the other hand, the fact that the orga-nizers are employed at the school of education of the FHNWgenerated trust, since that institution is responsible for cer-tified teacher training. Another reason for quite a few teach-ers’ decision to participate seems to have been the fact thatwe addressed them personally, sending them invitations inindividual emails. This strategy lies at the heart of our bot-tom up approach which, instead of addressing teachers viatheir direct superiors or even state institutions, reached outto them on a personal level, thereby signaling our apprecia-tion of their specific contexts and their individual contribu-tions. Another important factor of the bottom up approachto recruitment was that the CSEdWeek activity fulfilled theconditions expressed by Swiss teachers that education activ-ities are sustainable and tie in with the general curriculum inthe long run. The activity answered to this requirement inmany ways. For one, it is embedded in the broader and sus-tainable initiative of the CSE professorship including teachertraining through workshops and future university courses.Also, the activity itself is open-ended, enabling both teach-ers and students further developments and adjustments tospecific needs and contexts.

Shortcomings: Many teachers who did not participate in theevent gave as the major reason that they would have likedto have known about the event much earlier in order to haveenough time for preparing themselves properly, establishingthe necessary infrastructure in the classroom and being ableto integrate the activity into their regular lesson plans.

Adjustments: Having a far greater lead time for 2015 ishighly important in this respect as teachers will get to knowabout the event much earlier. Moreover, the fact that theactivity was already implemented successfully in 2014 signif-icantly increases the potential reach and effectiveness of ourbottom up approach in many ways. Firstly, many teachersmight get to know about the event not only via newsletters,flyers and other anonymous indirect information channelsbut rather through their own colleagues who already par-ticipated in 2014. Secondly, the activity no longer has thestatus of something unknown, which could help to enlisteven skeptical teachers located in more conservative partsof Switzerland. And thirdly, we can reach and potentiallymotivate a much greater amount of teachers via personalinvitations because we have considerably more contacts dueto registrations in 2014. Furthermore, both the greater leadtime and the successful implementation in 2014 enable us toeffect another valuable adjustment, namely the enlistmentfor patronage or sponsorship of further Swiss wide renownedinstitutions in the educational sector like the Swiss Confer-ence of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK) and educa-tion departments of different cantons. The support of thesestate institutions additionally vouches for the high educa-tional value of the activity and the trustworthiness of theinitiative as a whole and might enable us to enroll signifi-cantly more participants in 2015.

4.3 Support challengesWhile the website provided comprehensive information con-cerning the introduction of the activity in the classroom aswell as a FAQ section, the offer of direct and individual sup-port appears to have been even more important to teacherswho participated in the event. Experts providing email andphone support during the actual event seems to have giventeachers the feeling that they are “not alone”. Quite a fewteachers only decided to do the activity after talking to teammembers on the phone or receiving extensive counseling asan answer to their support requests via email or on the blog.Also, many of those who called or wrote an email did sorepeatedly for different reasons, obviously appreciating thesupport offer. The central assumption is that this offer ofindividual support increased many teachers’ willingness toembark on a journey into unknown territory with their stu-dents and made them more confident during the event.

Shortcomings: Some teachers’ feedback implies that theyfound the information material badly presented or insuffi-cient. For example, one teacher complained that the rec-ommendation of the use of the Internet browser Chrome forthe activity was not stated clearly enough, leading to com-plications. Although the information on the recommendedbrowser was part of the guidelines for teachers, it is possiblethat the format and structure of the MediaWiki website didnot present the requested information in a sufficiently acces-sible way. Based on many teachers’ and students’ feedback,a further major shortcoming was that in case of browser orserver problems, students had to start from scratch again be-cause they could not find their original project again. Thiscircumstance certainly demotivated quite a few students anddissuaded them from continuing their programming activitypast the minimum time assigned to the activity by the teach-ers.

Adjustments: For the CSEdWeek 2015, the event websitewill be thoroughly restructured in order to make essentialinformation more accessible. The problem of lost projectswas already solved by inserting a project search functionin the Frogger 3D activity. This function enables studentsto find their “lost” projects on the basis of their project’sname. This adjustment is expected to significantly increasestudents’ retention and even perseverance.

5. CONCLUSIONSThe Swiss CS Education Week, with a Switzerland specificadaption of the 2013 “Frogger 3D” Hour of Code activity,was launched in 2014. The adaption explored three specificchallenges. Firstly, just like the USA, Switzerland is a fed-eralistic country making centralistic dissemination modelsnearly impossible but, moreover, the presence of four officialnational languages adds substantial complexity of languageas well as cultural barriers. Secondly, recruitment of teach-ers can be difficult. The participation of President Obamaas the first standing US president demonstrating program-ming was of high PR value for the US but had little impactinternationally. Recruiting comparable high profile politicalfigures in countries other than the USA can be extremely dif-ficult. Finally, in a country such as Switzerland with loweraverage computer use in schools than the USA, there is ahigher need for technical and pedagogical support. By ad-dressing these challenges the“Frogger 3D”activity employedat the first Swiss Computer Science Education Week didmanage to reach approximately the same percentage of thegeneral population in Switzerland in 2014 as it did duringthe 2013 Hour of Code in the USA.

6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis research has been funded by Swiss Hasler foundation.

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