Advancing Gender Equity and Sense of Belonging in Computing: Are Documented Best Practices Representative of Upward Transfer Students?

Diversifying STEM pathways: A look into upward transfer students’ sense of belonging in computing

“…Our paper documented three significant interactions, pointing to variables that uniquely predicted sense of belonging for upward transfer students (see Blaney & Barrett, 2021). First, we found that time spent socializing with other students positively predicted upward transfer students’ sense of belonging but was non‐significant for other students.…”

“…Indeed, scholars exploring upward transfer students’ experiences in STEM have identified key background characteristics, contextual factors, and college experiences that uniquely shape success among this group (Wang, 2020). Emerging evidence suggests that we cannot assume that the wealth of literature on student success in STEM is representative of—or generalizable to—students who follow community college transfer pathways (see Blaney & Barrett, 2021). We argue that equity in STEM cannot be realized until we address this limitation of the literature.…”

“…More specifically, we utilized data from students who completed a pre‐test during the first 2 weeks of their computing course and a post‐test at the end of the course. This yielded a longitudinal dataset of n = 1,829 computing students, 16% of whom had transferred from a community college (see Blaney & Barrett, 2021 for more details).…”

“…We also included a direct pre‐test of incoming sense of belonging on the first survey. In total, we included 25 potential independent variables in our study, 14 of which entered the regression model predicting sense of belonging (see Table A1 in Blaney & Barrett, 2021).…”

“…First, we found that time spent socializing with other students positively predicted upward transfer students’ sense of belonging but was non‐significant for other students. The remaining two significant interactions, regarding social media usage and parent career, collectively suggest that compared to non‐upward transfers, upward transfer students’ sense of belonging may be more strongly influenced by broader contextual factors (see Blaney & Barrett, 2021). Specifically, we found that social media usage was uniquely related to upward transfer students’ belonging outcomes, such that upward transfer students tended to feel less like they belonged in computing when they spent more time on social media.…”