Title: Increasing Minority Youths' Participation in Computing through Near-Peer Mentorship
It is critical to focus on diversity and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in computing. To address this need, we must better understand minorities' access to role models and mentors, especially at a young age, as research and practice shows that these relationships can affect students' self-efficacy and motivation in the educational fields and careers they choose to pursue. We provided a 9-Saturday programming camp to middle school students in Newark, New Jersey with near-peer mentors (first year, college student instructors) to learn more about the younger students' initial access to role-models and mentors, and how an intervention might change this. Our camp served a total of 28 minority students (17 males and 11 females; grades 5-7) from a low-income, urban area. We found that when asked at the beginning of the camp, our middle students largely reported that they did not have any role-models or mentors in computing. However, at the conclusion of the camp, these same students indicated that they developed strong connections with their near-peer mentors and even saw them as role-models. These findings highlight the need for more mentorship opportunities for students of all ages, and the importance of providing resources and support to help develop and nurture these connections. more »« less
Taylor, Jr., Leonard; Mastrogiovanni, Margaret; Lakin, Joni M.; Davis, Virginia(
, Journal of Engineering Education)
AbstractBackground
Engineering‐oriented bridge programs and camps are popular strategies for broadening participation. The students who often serve as counselors and mentors in these programs are integral to their success.
Purpose
Predicated on the belief that mentoring contributes to positive outcomes for the mentors themselves, we sought to understand how undergraduate student mentors approached and experienced their work with a 6‐day overnight, NSF‐sponsored youth engineering camp (YEC). This study was guided by the question: How did YEC camp counselors approach and experience their roles as mentors?
Design/Methods
We conducted an exploratory qualitative study of four Black undergraduate engineering students' experiences with and approaches to near‐peer mentorship in the YEC program. Data consisted of transcripts from two post‐program interviews and one written reflection from each participant. We analyzed data through abductive coding and the funds of knowledge framework.
Results
Through subsequent interpretation of code categories, we found YEC mentors: (1) engaged in altruistic motivations as YEC mentors, (2) leveraged previous experiences to guide their approaches to mentorship, and (3) engaged in self‐directed learning and development.
Conclusions
This study highlights the knowledge and strategies that YEC mentors drew upon in their roles, and how they sought and achieved various personal, academic, and professional benefits. Insights from this study illustrate how near‐peer mentors can support their and others' engineering aspirations.
eer mentoring in college programs of study is not uncommon. However, most of the time, peer mentoring is focused on supporting students in traditional solving problems they are assigned as part of the coursework. Our work extends beyond examining conventional forms of peer mentoring by examining the work of peer mentors supporting students' work in a first-year engineering design course based in a makerspace classroom. The problems students solve in the makerspace classroom-based course typically have a wide array of possible solutions, which differs from many problems students solve in traditional courses with peer mentor support in which there is a single solution. Further, students in the makerspace classroom-based course are also expected to work in teams, which adds another layer of complexity to the role of the peer mentors working in the course.
Our research goal was to empirically document the peer mentors' interactions with students and the students learning gains and development due to working with the peer mentors. To gather data from the students working with the peer mentors, we added a series of additional questions to their end-of-semester course evaluations. Note that the university's Institutional Review Board reviewed and approved this process. The questions we added included, "Please share how the peer mentors influenced your sense of belonging within the College of Engineering." "Please share how the peer mentors helped your group function as teams." and "Please share how the peer mentors helped you develop confidence in your abilities to do engineering." We also included companion Likert scale items such as "The peer mentors helped our team work together." and "The peer mentors helped us resolve conflicts in our group."
We found that peer mentors tended to be perceived as a resource, supportive and reassuring to the students and meeting the students where they are. Thus, the mentors provided students with emotional, personal, and technical support to influence the students' sense of belonging to the college. The mentors helped the students function in teams by encouraging them to collaborate and include all.
In their efforts to help students develop confidence in their abilities, the mentors worked to meet the students where they were at and reassured the students' capacity to succeed. They were also likely to encourage students to seek help, support their technical skill development, and encourage the students to apply their knowledge.
The final focus of our research was on the mentors engaging in helping students feel part of the engineering community. We found the mentors encouraged the students to join an engineering club or attend engineering events.
In our final report, we provide details of our data, both quantitative and qualitative, examples of the student's responses, the implications of our findings, and ideas for using our research to support mentor preparation programs to maximize the benefits of peer mentoring in maker spaces and other non-traditional engineering learning environments.
Over the past twelve years, the ESTEEM program, funded by the NSF S-STEM, at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) has supported 161 low-income undergraduate students in engineering. This paper emphasizes the students’ changing needs and what they found supportive over time with a special focus on the shifting needs for community building before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic remote learning. Without additional support, low-income engineering students, who often reflect additional intersecting minoritized identities and are more likely to be the first in their family to attend college, leave the field at higher rates than their peers. Students who are likely to persist in engineering reported supportive relationships with mentors, positive near peer role models, a strong sense of community, and an intention to complete their engineering major. Yet, accessing these support systems is often challenging for low-income students, who are more likely to work long hours and spend more time off campus and less likely to have adequate opportunities to interact with others in their major and see themselves in role models and as part of that community. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the higher education plans and financial viability of UCSB engineering students, especially those from low-income families. In addition to increased financial hardships, these students lacked access to campus educational resources like tutoring and mentors and were more isolated from their on-campus engineering communities. While research has identified needs and programmatic supports likely to encourage student retention in engineering, little is known about the specific needs of low-income students in engineering and how these needs have changed over time. We examined the needs and financial and educational supports of 161 low-income students using ESTEEM evaluation data from 2011 to 2023 who pursued engineering bachelor’s degrees at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Our findings emphasize the types of programmatic supports that were most helpful for students’ education and career pathways in engineering. These results indicate shifting needs for physical space, social interactions with mentors and peers, and have implications for evolving how engineering departments and programs support low-income students to meet their changing needs for persisting in engineering.
Clarke-Midura, Jody; Sun, Chongning; Pantic, Katarina; Poole, Frederick; Allan, Vicki(
, ACM Transactions on Computing Education)
null
(Ed.)
Our work is situated in research on Computer Science (CS) learning in informal learning environments and literature on the factors that influence girls to enter CS. In this article, we outline design choices around the creation of a summer programming camp for middle school youth. In addition, we describe a near-peer mentoring model we used that was influenced by Bandura's self-efficacy theory. The purpose of this article, apart from promoting transparency of program design, was to evaluate the effectiveness of our camp design in terms of increasing youths’ interest, self-efficacy beliefs, and perceptions of parental support. We found significant gains for all three of these concepts. Additionally, we make connections between our design choices (e.g., videos, peer support, mentor support) and the affective gains by thematically analyzing interview data concerning the outcomes found in our camps.
Bailey, D; Kornegay, M; Partlow, L; Bowens, C; Gareis, C; Kornegay, K(
, Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER))
The number of African American females participating in cyber fields is significantly low. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education requires a new approach to student engagement to increase African American female participation in cybersecurity. The most common approach to engaging more African American females in STEM is to provide students access to professional images or role models active in STEM; however, more is needed. More race-centered strategies beyond role modeling are necessary to attract and retain African American females in STEM. Research studies show that integrating personal experiences and making cultural connections can help improve student participation in STEM from underrepresented populations. In 2021, faculty in the Center for Cybersecurity Assurance and Policy at Morgan State University developed and implemented the GenCyber ‘‘Females are Cyber Stars’’ (FACS) Summer Camp. This initiative targeted female African American students in Baltimore public middle schools. Thirty-nine girls participated in the virtual program during the summer of 2021, and 25 girls engaged in the in-person program during the summer of 2022. The program’s goals were to increase female students’ interest in cybersecurity and exposure to the security of IoT (Internet of Things) devices in a smart home environment. The GenCyber FACS Summer Camp incorporated culturally responsive strategies to engage the participants in an inclusive and interactive setting. Participants were given pre- and post-program surveys to assess learning outcomes and examine the impact of using culturally responsive teaching strategies. The results showed that the girls reported increased knowledge and a gain in interest in cybersecurity and computing. This paper discusses the summer program and curriculum, culturally responsive teaching strategies deployed, student learning outcomes, and perceptions of cultural responsiveness assessed in the GenCyber FACS Summer Camp.
Lee, Michael J. Increasing Minority Youths' Participation in Computing through Near-Peer Mentorship. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10130189. Journal of computing sciences in colleges 35.3
Lee, Michael J. Increasing Minority Youths' Participation in Computing through Near-Peer Mentorship. Journal of computing sciences in colleges, 35 (3). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10130189.
Lee, Michael J.
"Increasing Minority Youths' Participation in Computing through Near-Peer Mentorship". Journal of computing sciences in colleges 35 (3). Country unknown/Code not available. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10130189.
@article{osti_10130189,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Increasing Minority Youths' Participation in Computing through Near-Peer Mentorship},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10130189},
abstractNote = {It is critical to focus on diversity and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in computing. To address this need, we must better understand minorities' access to role models and mentors, especially at a young age, as research and practice shows that these relationships can affect students' self-efficacy and motivation in the educational fields and careers they choose to pursue. We provided a 9-Saturday programming camp to middle school students in Newark, New Jersey with near-peer mentors (first year, college student instructors) to learn more about the younger students' initial access to role-models and mentors, and how an intervention might change this. Our camp served a total of 28 minority students (17 males and 11 females; grades 5-7) from a low-income, urban area. We found that when asked at the beginning of the camp, our middle students largely reported that they did not have any role-models or mentors in computing. However, at the conclusion of the camp, these same students indicated that they developed strong connections with their near-peer mentors and even saw them as role-models. These findings highlight the need for more mentorship opportunities for students of all ages, and the importance of providing resources and support to help develop and nurture these connections.},
journal = {Journal of computing sciences in colleges},
volume = {35},
number = {3},
author = {Lee, Michael J},
}
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