Society-Oriented Scientific and Engineering Discourse through Pop-Up Education

Limited knowledge of crucial and societally important computer science (CS) information can be a grave disadvantage. To ensure a long-term inclusive culture in the digital era, pop-up education, which borrows from the concept of pop-up stores, can be applied to convey important CS knowledge to society. As solely limited academic research has been undertaken regarding pop-up activities, especially with respect to CS education, the potential use and benefits of pop-up activities in CS education had remained vaguely. Hence, this work was dedicated to developing, researching and evaluating CS pop-ups as educational measures for society and working places. Thereby, this work is based on Warnaby’s and Shi’s conceptual pop-up framework for planning and implementing pop-up initiatives. The first phase (study A), utilising requirements elicitation, focused on identifying crucial factors for the development of appealingly CS pop-ups, including CS topics and application fields which are of learning interest, and society groups which should be especially considered in the development of CS pop-ups. The second phase (study B) covered the development of CS pop-up initiatives and researched its applications in free time and working time settings regarding CS pop-up participants’ experience, acceptance, and knowledge transfer. All in all, suitable CS topics and application fields for CS pop-ups were identified by society’s interest and perceived need of learning. A guideline for developing CS pop-ups, including edutainment approaches and which society groups should be especially considered, is provided. This work shows that CS pop-ups are perceived positively and can be successfully applied regarding experience, acceptance, and knowledge transfer to a wide society with diverse demographic backgrounds in both free time and working time settings.