Applying NCWIT Protocol to Broaden Participation in Computing

Camp, Tracy; Liebe, Christine; Slattery, Michelle

doi:10.1145/3328778.3366958

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In fact, this secondary data analysis builds on our earlier examination of the data, which revealed that BPC leaders were preoccupied with compositional diversity (i.e., enrolling enough SoC for racial subgroups in the department to be at parity with the local population and with their broader institution) and making large investments toward recruiting K-12 students and SoC from other departments into computing, rather than on retaining and supporting their nonwhite students already majoring in CS (Lehman et al, 2021). This focus on increasing representation is not unique to the departments in our study; other authors have also noted K-12 outreach as a core component of BPC work without critiquing the underlying logics that drive BPC resources to K-12 programming (e.g., Camp et al, 2020;Eney et al, 2013). As further rationale for choosing diversity ideology as a framework, we had also observed racial representation valued as a commodity in our previous studies of CS equity (e.g., a way to enhance a program's prestige, a tool for developing better technology) and treated as a liability (e.g., that increasing racial diversity might diminish academic rigor; Smith & Mayorga-Gallo, 2017;Williams et al, 2005).…”

Section: Diversity Ideologymentioning

confidence: 86%

“Why isn’t this space more inclusive?”: Marginalization of racial equity work in undergraduate computing departments.

Nakajima¹,

Karpicz²,

Gutzwa³

2024

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

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Although undergraduate (UG) computer science (CS) programs are increasingly engaged in diversification efforts, this work is rarely critically informed or assessed. We conducted a qualitative secondary analysis of interviews with 55 campus leaders at four U.S. institutions of higher education, to examine how diversity initiatives broadened the participation of undergraduate Students of Color (SoC) in CS majors. We found that racial equity work happened predominantly in three types of counterspaces-professional conferences, campus identity centers, and student organizations-that explicitly centered and affirmed students' racialized identities, provided community, expanded students' professional and academic networks, and supported students to navigate the racial exclusion prevalent in their classes, the department, and in industry. However, our framework of diversity ideology exposed how counterspaces and their leaders of Color operated with little to no support from computing departments, were peripherally positioned outside of broader diversity efforts, and were ultimately inhibited from transforming the dominant culture in CS that privileged whiteness. We argue that studying and amplifying the intentional, impactful labor performed by counterspaces is necessary to address persistent racial disparities in computing.

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Section: Diversity Ideologymentioning

confidence: 86%

“Why isn’t this space more inclusive?”: Marginalization of racial equity work in undergraduate computing departments.

Nakajima¹,

Karpicz²,

Gutzwa³

2024

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education

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“…Various compounding factors have contributed to disparities for students from HMGs over time, such as less access and encouragement to pursue education in computing [11,14]; social environments and structural issues of discrimination, bias, and othering within computing [10,24,29]; and a lack of acceptance, understanding, and support of students' intersectional identities [9,19,21,29]. These factors negatively impact students' self-efficacy, sense of belonging, computing identity, and science capital; constructs shown to predict the persistence of students from HMGs in computing research pathways [8,23,25,31].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Undergraduate Consortium for Addressing the Leaky Pipeline to Computing Research

Boerkoel

Ergezer

2023

Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education v. 1

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Despite an increasing number of successful interventions designed to broaden participation in computing research, there is still significant attrition among historically marginalized groups in the computing research pipeline. This experience report describes a firstof-its-kind Undergraduate Consortium (UC) that addresses this challenge by empowering students with a culmination of their undergraduate research in a conference setting. The UC, conducted at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), aims to broaden participation in the AI research community by recruiting students, particularly those from historically marginalized groups, supporting them with mentorship, advising, and networking as an accelerator toward graduate school, AI research, and their scientific identity. This paper presents our program design, inspired by a rich set of evidence-based practices, and a preliminary evaluation of the first years that points to the UC achieving many of its desired outcomes. We conclude by discussing insights to improve our program and expand to other computing communities.

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“…Anderson et al [10] discuss that these reasons are not universal and do not provide a solid foundation for extensive replicable initiatives for recruitment and retention of women in computer science. Nonetheless, there has been a large number of success stories reported in different parts of the world [11,7,12,13,14,15]. Hence, we find it important to collect and discuss effective initiatives that worked in a range of settings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing the "Leaky Pipeline": A Review and Categorisation of Actions to Recruit and Retain Women in Computing Education

Berry,

McKeever,

Murphy

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Gender imbalance in computing education is a well-known issue around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, less than 20% of the student population in computer science, ICT and related disciplines are women. Similar figures are seen in the labour force in the field across the EU. The term "leaky pipeline" is often used to describe the lack of retention of women before they progress to senior roles. Numerous initiatives have targeted the problem of the leaky pipeline in recent decades.This paper provides a comprehensive review of initiatives related to techniques used to boost recruitment and improve retention among women in undergraduate computer science and computing courses in higher educational institutions. The review covers 350 publications from both academic sources and grey literature sources including governmental guidance, white papers and non-academic reports. It also includes sources in languages other than English.The primary aim was to identify interventions or initiatives (which we have called "actions") that have shown some effectiveness. A secondary objective was to structure our findings as a categorisation, in order to enable future action discussion, comparison and planning.A particular challenge faced in a significant portion of the work reviewed was the lack of evaluation: i.e. the assessment of the direct relationship between the initiatives undertaken and the outcomes on retention or recruitment. There are only a limited number of studies that include a control group and these tend to focus on one particular intervention or action. In addition often the work presents a number of actions that were implemented and it is difficult to determine which action produced most impact. Considering these challenges, actions were identified that had some level of evaluation with positive impact, including where the evaluation was by measuring feedback.The actions were categorised into four groups: Policy, Pedagogy, Influence & Support and Promotion & Engagement. Policy actions require support and potentially structural change and resources at organisation level. This can be at a department or school level within a higher level institution, and not necessarily just at the higher institution level. Pedagogy related actions are initiatives that are related to the teaching of computer science and technology in terms of curriculum, module delivery and assessment practice. The Influence and Support category includes actions associated with ways to influence women to choose computing at third level and once enrolled to support and encourage them to stay in the field. Finally, Promotion and Engagement actions are initiatives to promote computer science and technology based courses and involve engagement and outreach with external stakeholders such as industry, communities and schools.We present our categorisation, identifying the literature related to actions under each category and subcategory. We discuss the challenges with evaluating the direct impact of actions and outline how this work leads toward...

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Applying NCWIT Protocol to Broaden Participation in Computing

Cited by 6 publications

References 26 publications

“Why isn’t this space more inclusive?”: Marginalization of racial equity work in undergraduate computing departments.

“Why isn’t this space more inclusive?”: Marginalization of racial equity work in undergraduate computing departments.

An Undergraduate Consortium for Addressing the Leaky Pipeline to Computing Research

Addressing the "Leaky Pipeline": A Review and Categorisation of Actions to Recruit and Retain Women in Computing Education

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