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This work-in-progress study describes our grant-funded efforts in developing a computer science faculty learning community (FLC) across six California state institutions. With an emphasis on socially responsible computing (SRC), the faculty development effort that prepares faculty for SRC lesson implementation has integrated social scientists with computer science faculty in the rotating leadership team. It works collaboratively to facilitate dialog around experiences of implementing lessons that focus on social justice and ethical decision-making. Our data-driven FLC and course transformation effort was initiated by finding that retention rates in early computing courses at participating institutions were inequitable across demographic groups. The ultimate goal of the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance for Socially Responsible Computing is to improve the retention rates of LatinX students by increasing their sense of belonging to the field of computer science[1] through deliberate and intentional connections of curriculum to real-world problems and social issues. For this paper, we focused on the faculty experiences of our most recent summer workshop and our reflection on the FLC implementation process. We present our faculty survey data from June 2024 and introduce reflective focus group findings [2], providing conjectures about the effectiveness of our approach. In the discussion, we build recommendations for collaborative professional development of faculty and discuss next steps.
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This content will become publicly available on February 18, 2026
Integrating Socially Responsible Computing through Direct Community Engagement in CS2 to Promote Latinx Student Retention
This experience report is part of an ongoing NSF-funded grant project involving an alliance of six California State University campuses, aimed at promoting Latinx student retention through community engagement in early computer science courses. The project focuses on integrating socially responsible computing (SRC) into the curriculum to transform computing culture and invite marginalized students to participate. At our campus, we integrated SRC concepts into the CS2 course on Data Structures and Algorithms. Initially, SRC concepts were introduced into assignments and projects, which showed promising results but highlighted challenges: the assignments and projects were instructor-created, leading to a gap between students and the concepts. Students passively received topics without proactive participation, resulting in a lack of perceived real-world impact. To address this, we involved the local Latinx community directly. Students visited community partners to identify real-world problems, which they then addressed through term projects, ultimately presenting their solutions to the community. Adopting a startup mindset, students interviewed partners, identified problems, developed prototypes, and delivered solutions. This hands-on approach, first implemented in Spring 2024, significantly enhanced student engagement and provided practical, impactful learning experiences. This report details the course design, implementation process, formative data collected, and reflections on the outcomes. The findings offer valuable insights and recommendations for educators aiming to foster community engagement and socially responsible computing in computer science education, with a specific focus on promoting Latinx student retention.
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- PAR ID:
- 10638033
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1078 to 1084
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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