An official website of the United States government
Building on prior studies that show a sense of belonging and community bolster student success, we developed a pilot program for computer engineering (CpE) and computer science (CS) undergraduates and their families that focused on building a sense of belonging and community supported by co-curricular and socioeconomic scaffolding. As a dually designated Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI) – two types of federally designated Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) – with 55% of our undergraduates being first-generation students, we aimed to demonstrate the importance of these principles for underrepresented and first-generation students. Using a student cohort model (for each incoming group of students) and also providing supports to build community across cohorts as well as including students’ families in their college experiences, our program aimed to increase student satisfaction and academic success. We recruited two cohorts of nine incoming students each across two years, 2019 and 2020; 69% of participants were from underrepresented racial or minority groups and 33% were women. Each participant was awarded an annual scholarship and given co-curricular support including peer and faculty mentoring, a dedicated cohort space for studying and gathering, monthly co-curricular activities, enhanced tutoring, and summer bridge and orientation programs. Students’ families were also included in the orientation and semi-annual meetings. The program has resulted in students exceeding the retention rates of their comparison groups, which were undergraduates majoring in CpE and CS who entered college in the same semester as the cohorts; first- and second-year retention rates for participants were 83% (compared to 72%) and 67% (compared to 57%). The GPAs of participants were 0.35 points higher on average than the comparison group and, most notably, participants completed 50% more credits than their comparison groups, on average. In addition, 9 of the 18 scholars (all of the students who wanted to participate) engaged in summer research or internships. In combination, the cohort building, inclusion of families, financial literacy education and support, and formal and informal peer and faculty mentoring have correlated with increased academic success. The cohorts are finishing their programs in Spring 2023 and Spring 2024, but data up to this point already show increases in GPA, course completion, and retention and graduation rates, with three students having already graduated early, within three and a half years. The findings from this study are now being used to expand the successful parts of the program and inform university initiatives, with the PI serving on campus-wide STEM pipeline committee aiming to recruit, retain, and support more STEM students at the institution.
more »
« less
“I can do data for my people”: experiences of giving back for Native undergraduates in computing
Abstract This paper focuses on the undergraduate experiences in computer sciences (CS) disciplines of eight Native women and two-spirit undergraduates and how their values and experiences around the communal goal of giving back enable them to persist in computing. The paper draws from a one-year study that included participants across the U.S.A from predominantly White institutions, Native serving institutions, and tribal colleges. Utilizing the decolonizing and participant-centered methods of photo elicitation, our interviews used photographs taken by participants as starting points for conversations. This method resulted in deep understandings of participants’ experiences of the supports and barriers in their CS programs, and of the importance of giving back for persistence. We adapt Page-Reeves and colleagues’ 2019 framework for giving back and Native students in STEM—particularly the concepts of giving back as a Native value and giving back in the context of CS education—to illuminate the ways in which participants persisted and navigated their identities as Native students and emergent computer scientists. We also introduce a new concept, culturally connected giving back, to describe the ways in which Native undergraduates in computing contributed, or planned to contribute, towards technology sovereignty and cultural preservation. CS, like many STEM fields, is typically viewed as highly individualistic and not aligned with communal goals of helping others. However, Native participants in this study identified computing as having the potential for giving back. They incorporated a broad range of giving back actions into their computing professional identities through teaching, mentoring, serving as role models, creating counterspaces, or preserving their cultures using their computing skills. Through giving back, participants fulfilled a sense of obligation to their communities or counteracted negative stereotypes about Native learners. Beneficiaries of these acts of giving back included Native and other minoritized peers, younger students, home communities, and other Native communities. Importantly, opportunities to give back served as strong motivators to persist in CS in spite of challenges. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and practice and also explore the implications for how institutions and CS departments can support Native student recruitment, retention, and success.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2120001
- PAR ID:
- 10507801
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cultural Studies of Science Education
- Volume:
- 18
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1871-1502
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 879 to 909
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Three Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone–serving districts formed a researcher–practitioner partnership with the Wyoming Department of Education, the American Institutes for Research®, and BootUp Professional Development to advance the computer science (CS) education of their elementary students in ways that strengthen their Indigenous identities and knowledges. In this paper, we share experiences from 2019 to 2022 with our curriculum development, professional development (PD), and classroom implementation. The researcher–practitioner partnership developed student and teacher materials to support elementary CS lessons aligned to Wyoming’s CS standards and “Indian Education for All” social studies standards. Indigenous community members served as experts to codesign culturally relevant resources. Teachers explored the curriculum resources during three 4-hour virtual and in-person PD sessions. The sessions were designed to position the teachers as designers of CS projects they eventually implemented in their classrooms. Projects completed by students included simulated interviews with Indigenous heroes and animations of students introducing themselves in their Native languages. Teachers described several positive effects of the Scratch lessons on students, including high engagement, increased confidence, and successful application of several CS concepts. The teachers also provided enthusiastic positive reviews of the ways the CS lessons allowed students to explore their Indigenous identities while preparing to productively use technology in their futures. The Wind River Elementary CS Collaborative is one model for how a researcher–practitioner partnership can utilize diverse forms of expertise, ways of knowing, and Indigenous language to engage in curriculum design, PD, and classroom implementation that supports culturally sustaining CS pedagogies in Indigenous communities.more » « less
-
Socially Responsible Computing (SRC) education entails the infusion of Computer Science (CS) education with interwoven attention to ethical, social, and political issues to position students to reflect and take action individually and collaboratively to create a more just world. Our approach to SRC supports students to explore computing design/development in early CS courses with a communal goal orientation (in contrast to agentic/individualized), shown to improve achievement and retention for students with identities that are minoritized in CS. Grounded in our own experiences as co-developers and implementers of this pedagogical transformation and as co-facilitators of a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) across six minority-serving institutions in California, we share how we use an iterative design and implementation process modeled from social design experimentation as research and development method. Initial results are presented as a set of promising practices for incorporating SRC into introductory CS courses: 1) choose the domain mindfully; 2) design for synergy with technical material; 3) scaffold for inclusivity; 4) structure with a framework; 5) avoid othering SRC elements; and 6) reuse and build on existing resources. We share how these promising practices guide our efforts; how they can address challenges and concerns for new and continuing SRC implementers; and the ways in which we have and will continue to test and co-design this approach.more » « less
-
Currently, substantial efforts are underway to improve the engagement and retention of engineering and computer science (E/CS) students in their academic programs. Student participation in specific activities known as High Impact Educational Practices (HIP) has been shown to improve student outcomes across a variety of degree fields. Thus, we suggest that understanding how and why E/CS students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups, participate in HIP is vital for supporting efforts aimed at improving E/CS student engagement and retention. The aim of the current study is to examine the participation of E/CS undergraduates enrolled at two western land-grant institutions (both institutions are predominantly white; one is an emerging Hispanic-serving institution) across five HIEP (i.e., global learning and study aboard internships, learning communities, service and community-based learning, and undergraduate research) that are offered outside of required E/CS curricula and are widely documented in the research literature. As part of a larger study, researchers developed an online questionnaire to explore student HIP participation and then surveyed E/CS students (n = 576) across both land-grant institutions. Subsequently, researchers will use survey results to inform the development of focus groups interview protocols. Focus group interviews will be conducted with purposefully selected E/CS students who participated in the survey. Combined survey and focus group data will then be analyzed to more deeply understand why and how E/CS students participate in the HIP at their university. This research paper reports on the frequency distribution analysis of the survey data generated with E/CS undergraduates enrolled at one of the two land grant institutions. The combined sample included E/CS undergraduates from the following demographic groups: female (34 %), Asian (10 %), Black or African American (2%), Hispanic or Latinx (6%), Native American or Alaskan Native (1%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (1%), White (81 %), and multiracial (4 %). Results show that most (38%) E/CS students reported participating in internships, while study abroad programs garnered the smallest level of E/CS student participation (5%) across all five HIP. Internships were found most likely to engage diverse students: Female (42%), Hispanic or Latinx (24%), Multiracial (44%), Asian (31%), First-generation (29%), and nontraditional students—other than those categorized as highly nontraditional—all reported participating in internships more than any other HIP. Notable differences in participation across E/CS and demographic groups were found for other HIPs. Results further revealed that 43% of respondents did not participate in any extracurricular HIP and only 19% participated in two or more HIP. Insights derived from the survey and used to inform ongoing quantitative and qualitative analyses are discussed. Keywords: community-based learning, high impact educational practices, HIP, internships learning communities, service learning, study aboard, undergraduate researchmore » « less
-
Sufficiently serving computer science students at minority-serving institutions entails systematic communication of the "hidden curriculum"- the unwritten rules and tacit norms of traversing a disciplinary academic space- knowledge that students might learn from those with college-going backgrounds. At Kean University, department-run new student orientation has become a mechanism for integrating new students into the institution and the computer science department's community. The course addressed what Kezar and Holcombe call "Elements of STEM student success," or the needs of students at the intersection of first-generation familial experiences and STEM student college newcomers. In this work-in-progress experience report, we use data from retrospective pre-post surveys to show that student participants in the orientation indicate greater intent to engage in high-impact practices, greater confidence in their major choice, and strong identification with their STEM discipline. The authors discuss how systemic, department-level orientation processes at institutions that serve underrepresented student populations can impart academic and career path blueprints that move beyond institutional retention and improve equitable advancements in computing.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-023-10172-5
