CMU CS Academy is a project in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science developing a novel, world-class, online, interactive high school computer science curriculum that is entirely free.

In K-12 education, CS is either seen as fun and exciting or dry and rigorous. There is currently a lack of resources bringing the fun and excitement of CS education up to the higher levels as challenge and rigor is added. CS Academy aims to bridge this gap.

CMU CS Academy, our online interactive platform, teacher training and continued support are all provided for free.

CS Academy provides an animation framework, CMU Graphics, to supplement standard Python code. This framework provides built-in commands that we have written in order to make creating animations easy and intuitive. Information about a specific command can be found within the Docs tab.

Yes! Students learn Python in our curricula, which can be used to write programs in a standard editor. Additionally, a desktop version of our online CMU Graphics package is available for download here.

Yes, as long as you are excited and willing to learn along side your students! We've designed our platform to support classroom teachers in their efforts to teach CS in their classroom. Teachers have access to a sample solution for each exercise as well as access to our support team, through the 'support' tab where teachers can ask questions and receive help and support from our team of students here at CMU.

Yes, we have both in-person and online options for training. More information here: Professional Development

Each student needs access to a computer and internet connection. Since the CMU CS Academy resources are browser-based no downloads or installs are required. The curriculum is designed to work well on a Chromebook. For iPads and other tablets, an external keyboard and trackpad/mouse is required to use all of our features.

Browser Recommendations: Chrome or Firefox for best performance. We also support Edge.

Hello Parents!

Thank you so much for your interest in CMU CS Academy for your child. If you Sign Up as a Mentor-Volunteer, you can gain access to our "Exploring Programming with Python (formerly CS0)" curriculum.

If you already have access to Exploring Programming with Python (formerly CS0) and you want to know how to get access to our other curriculum for your child, you have TWO options depending on your child’s educational offerings:

1. Share information about CMU CS academy with your school district so they can offer it as a course!

2. If you homeschool your child you have the option to apply for a teacher account.

Unfortunately, we do not provide access to our curriculum beyond Exploring Programming with Python (formerly CS0) to parents unless you are homeschooling your child.

A mentor or volunteer account gives you limited curriculum access. You will automatically have access to our Exploring Programming with Python (formerly CS0) curriculum, the teacher portal, and the ability to create and manage classrooms for the courses you have access to. Mentor accounts do not have access to sample solutions for the exercises.

Mentor accounts can be added to a classroom for any of our curricula by a classroom teacher and will then have access to that classroom in the teacher portal. The corresponding course will also become available in your course list.

Mentor accounts are great for classroom volunteers, out-of-school-time and informal educators, and parents looking to explore programming with their child. Mentors must be 18+ to sign up.

CS Academy CS1 is a high school computer science course designed to introduce students to basic programming. This is done with text-based coding in the language Python using a graphics package specifically designed to be a great entry point for students, CMU Graphics. Our goal is to introduce students to programming in a captivating manner while simultaneously building problem-solving skills and an understanding of the thinking methods used by programmers.

There are 12 Units to the course, split up into two parts, CS1a (units 1-7) and CS1b (units 8-12) so that it can be taught as a year long course or two semester based courses. We believe the best way to learn this material is to do it, so each Unit provides content for the topic to be investigated, a worked problem(s) to illustrate and let students explore the topic, a set of exercises to hone their mastery of the topic, some end-of-unit exercises that require students to use and synthesize all the topics found in that Unit, and a creative task that lets them further explore the topics in the Unit in a manner driven by their interests.

The course is structured similarly to a textbook, with Units following the model of standard Chapters: Each section has some readings followed by exercises for students to practice the topics discussed. Then at the end of the Unit are some more exercises to cement these concepts followed by an open project and quiz materials.

CS1 specifically focuses on the Programming aspect of Computer Science whereas the AP CSP is a much broader look at Computer Science. CS1 emphasizes the skills necessary to program and doesn't discuss much background theory. The goal is to introduce students to programming in a captivating manner while simultaneously building problem-solving skills and an understanding of how to program.

Yes, the curriculum is flexible and teachers have the ability to set a pace students are able to progress at if they desire. There are 12 Units to the course, the course is split up into two parts, CS1a (units 1-7) and CS1b(units 8-12) so that it can be taught as a year long course or two semester based courses. In total it is about 120 hours of coursework.

Since all students are different it really varies depending on the individual needs of a particular student. For each section, there are more exercises than required to progress through the course successfully. We recommend teachers working with students and referring to their IEP when deciding what exercises to assign. For some students it may make sense for them to focus on exercises that are only worth 1pt while others it may be better for them to do the 3pt exercises. This leveling is meant to help enable a teacher to differentiate their classroom as they see fit.

In our notes, text has been chunked to help aid in the readability of the text. We also have found Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader chrome extension to work well as a support add on to our curriculum. The reading level of most of our curriculum hovers around 6th - 7th grade with the exception of some of the more technical terminology.

The only prerequisite we encourage for this course is for students to have algebra readiness skills. So, they have taken or are taking algebra. This is not because our course is math heavy but there are some concepts that are shared across both, like variables.

This really depends on how you prefer to run your classroom. We've designed our platform so that teachers are empowered to teach in the style they prefer. If you find that your classroom benefits from more formal instruction and you'd like to keep your students working at a similar pace you can do that by blocking how far they can advance in the curriculum with the pacing tab. On the other hand, if you'd like to let students work entirely at their own pace then you can keep the course unblocked and act more as a facilitator or coach: supporting them individually as they get stuck. Or you could do a variation of a blending of these approaches.

In our experience, some of our teachers choose to do mini-lectures themselves, walking through the notes as a class and others have students present on how they've solved problems/exercises to their classmates. The addition of both of these techniques always adds to the learning environment and brings a class that can be mostly online with an interactive textbook to life.

Creative tasks are another great opportunity to work with students, as they brainstorm and design their ideas. Provided in the curriculum is a creative task guide and implementing these at the end of each unit is a great way to see how student progress.

Yes, we provide a review sheet, a practice Kahoot!, a practice quiz, and a quiz at the end of each Unit, 1-11. There are no end of unit resources for unit 12 because our final unit is a final project that showcases all that the student learned throughout the year.

We provide the capability to create and manage as many classes as desired. Students can be easily moved between your classes and you can even move students between teachers by adding the other teacher to your classroom.

Yes, students are able to access the site from any computer as long as they have an internet connection. However, teachers have the capability to prevent their students from passing a selected point in the curriculum, if desired.