Peer-led computing camps engage children, study finds

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — High school student Khushi Khurana creates and leads coding and artificial intelligence (AI) summer camps for K-12 students in her community outside Philadelphia. Priya Kumar, PNC Technologies Career Development Professor in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), studies how young people navigate the digital world. Their shared interests led to a research collaboration exploring a youth-led STEM learning model that puts children’s voices at the center of the learning experience.

According to Kumar, youth-led learning lets youth take the lead in designing learning experiences and delivering them to peers. Kids discover something they’re excited about — like computing — create a curriculum and teach the material to other youth their age. Kumar and Khurana recently found that participants responded positively to this approach, reporting high levels of engagement and satisfaction when learning from their peers. The team presented their findings at the 2026 Association for Computing Machinery Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference in the United Kingdom in June. The study was published in the conference’s proceedings.

“Khushi has been leading camps for kids since 2023,” Kumar said. “The participants consistently seemed to be getting something meaningful out of the experience, and we had a hunch that the positive impact of the camps might be tied to the fact that the person teaching the camps was close in age to the participants.”

Kumar and Khurana recently found that youth responded positively to this approach, reporting high levels of engagement and satisfaction when learning from their peers.

Kumar and Khurana designed a research project to explore how youth-designed learning experiences can help children develop interests and skills in computing.

In summer 2025, the researchers studied two coding and AI camps Khurana hosted at community libraries for children ages 11 to 15. Thirty-five campers participated in the study, which included surveys, participant comments and researcher observations to capture their experiences with the camps. One camp focused on coding in the programming language Python, while the other introduced participants to the basics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The researchers examined not only participants’ experiences with the camps but also whether their interest in computing changed.

Survey results showed that participants had significantly greater interest in programming and AI after completing the camps. They described the activities as engaging and fun, particularly compared with school-based coding classes. They said hands-on activities, such as creating games, helped them apply what they learned, and the support of peer instructor Khurana made complex concepts more relatable. Several participants described her as a role model and said her leadership inspired them to pursue leadership opportunities themselves.

The findings suggested that youth-led learning may be a promising way to encourage more children to explore computing, according to Kumar.

“We’re seeing that children can learn programming from other young people,” Kumar said. “Young instructors can create a different kind of learning environment from a traditional classroom. The students perceive them less as an authority figure and more as someone who has recently been in my shoes. It’s more than kids teaching kids; it’s the idea that seeing someone close in age succeed in computing may help younger students imagine themselves doing it, too.”

From camp counselor to researcher

Khurana’s interest in teaching computing began when she was in the eighth grade. She attended a STEM conference with her mother and said the experience completely transformed the way she viewed technology.

“I watched older girls build robots, create apps and talk about technology with so much confidence and thought maybe I can do that too,” she said. “I started teaching myself to code but quickly realized that it would be a lot more fun if I could learn alongside other kids.”

That summer, she invited a group of students to her basement and created an eight-week coding camp. Two local libraries opened their doors to Khurana’s camps, providing a space for her programs and helping her reach students beyond her immediate community.

“At the time, I wasn’t thinking about starting an organization or doing research,” she said. “I was just excited about what I was learning and wanted other kids to experience that excitement with me.”

In 2024, after leading her second camp, Khurana became interested in understanding more broadly how children learn, explore and build confidence with computing. While exploring, she came across Kumar's research on children, privacy, and technology and emailed her for advice. Kumar became a mentor to Khurana, and eventually they began collaborating on research into youth-led learning.

“A major turning point was connecting with Dr. Kumar,” Khurana said. “She helped me realize that the things I was observing in the camps weren’t just interesting experiences, they were questions she could actually study.”

Under Kumar’s mentorship, Khurana looked more closely at what happens when young people teach their peers and what that could tell her about how kids can develop an interest in computing.

Last year, when she was 14, Khurana shared her story through a TEDx Talk at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and presented an IST Research Talk with Kumar titled, “Partnering with Youth in Technology Research.” Now a junior in high school, she will participate in a Student Spotlight conversation about youth and AI at the Penn State Impact Forum, which will be held at the Cira Center in Philadelphia on Sept. 10-11.

“In my camps, kids seemed much more willing to engage when they felt comfortable asking questions, when they could build things instead of just listening and when they felt their feedback actually mattered,” Khurana said. “Sometimes that meant changing an activity in the middle of a session because it wasn’t working. Sometimes it meant letting students help each other rather than immediately stepping in as the instructor. And sometimes it simply meant making the experience more fun. I wanted to bring those small, practical lessons into a research conversation and show why listening to young people can change the way we design learning experiences for them.”

Create space for youth leadership

Instead of relying entirely on adults to design and deliver computing education, schools and community programs could give young people opportunities to teach, mentor and design learning experiences for their peers, according to Kumar.

“Youth-led learning is an avenue for STEM education that taps into children’s natural curiosity about the world, their energy toward trying new things and their innate sense of what they and their friends find fun and engaging,” she said. “Learning doesn’t just happen in school, and if adults can help youth find spaces to gather, whether in a friend’s basement or a local library, our research suggests that youth can handle some of the learning on their own.”