Exploring Sense of Belonging in Computer Science Students

Mooney, Catherine; Antoniadi, Anna Markella; Karvelas, Ioannis; Salmon, Lána; Becker, Brett A.

doi:10.1145/3341525.3393974

Cited by 20 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Additionally, identifying as a woman is weakly negatively correlated with enjoyment of problem solving and confidence in mathematics abilities (r=-0.14 and -0.19 respectively). It has been previously shown that female students who took part in student networking, mentoring and outreach outreach activities ("participation") had a stronger sense of belonging compared to female students who did not [15]. However, we observed participation as only showing a very weak correlation with belongingness overall.…”

Section: Intersectionality Of Gender and Minority Statuscontrasting

confidence: 55%

“…", the choices were: 1 (not at all), 2, 3, 4, 5 (success is based purely on talent). (Check all that apply) "Participation": This was followed by a list of student networking, mentoring and outreach outreach activities, including Women@CompSci, NetSoc, BuddyCoders and CS Sparks [15]. (4) In your opinion, how much does success in Computer Science depend on inherent ability?…”

Section: Methods 31 Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Mooney

Becker

2020

United Kingdom &Amp; Ireland Computing Education Research Conference.

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Creating inclusive learning environments for all students is of primary importance. Student sense of belonging is an important part of this. However, sense of belonging can show variations according to factors such as ethnicity and gender as well as influencing attributes such as motivation and persistence. We utilised a survey adapted from the "Math Sense of Belonging Scale" to examine the relationship between undergraduate computer science students' sense of belonging, gender identity, and self-declared minority status. We observed a lower sense of belonging in students who identified as women who also self-identified as being part of a minority group. However, students who identified as women who did not identify as belonging to a minority had a sense of belonging comparable to those identifying as men. Our results provide insight that may help us improve the sense of belonging of our undergraduate students, particularly those identifying as women and as belonging to a minority in computer science. It has also brought to our attention that action needs to be taken to mitigate the potentially disproportionately negative consequences that COVID-19 may have on these students due to reduced opportunities for social interaction and the negative impact that this has on sense of belonging.

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Section: Intersectionality Of Gender and Minority Statuscontrasting

confidence: 55%

Section: Methods 31 Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Mooney

Becker

2020

United Kingdom &Amp; Ireland Computing Education Research Conference.

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“…other than a statistically significant difference between the two groups in how much they socialize with other students (t(30.313) = -5.197, p<0.001). This supports and extends our previous findings [22,23].…”

Section: Intersectionalitysupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Here we only refer to work that directly affects ours. We guide the reader to our recent work [22,23] as well as the following for more on: pSTEM [15], physics [16], and arts & humanities [5].…”

Section: Sense Of Belonging In Other Disciplinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on computing students' sense of belonging

Mooney

Becker

2021

ACM Inroads

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Sense of belonging, or belongingness, describes how accepted one feels in their academic community and is an important factor in creating inclusive learning environments. Belongingness is influenced by many factors including: students' backgrounds and experiences; other people; environments (physical and virtual); academic discipline; external factors such as local, regional, and global issues; and time. 2020 has been dominated by several major events including the COVID-19 pandemic which dramatically impacted education. The Black Lives Matter movement has further raised global awareness of equality, diversity and inclusion not just in society, but in educational contexts. Climate change concerns, and politicallycharged news are also increasingly affecting our students.We have been monitoring our undergraduate computing students' sense of belonging for over three years, providing us with a unique opportunity to gauge recent changes during the pandemic. Our results surprised us. We found statistically significant reductions in the belongingness of students identifying as men as well as those not identifying as being part of a minority. However, investigating intersectionality of self-identified gender and minority status revealed more complicated and nuanced trends, illustrating important shifts in the belongingness of our students that we are only beginning to understand.

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“…Mooney et al found that sense of belonging gaps by gender were reduced for non-minority women who participated in networking, outreach, and mentoring activities. Unfortunately there was no change in sense of belonging for minorities who participated in similar activities [16]. Stout et al conducted a longitudinal study and found that early formal research experience positively impacted students' sense of mentorship support and in turn mentorship support positively impacted women and BLNPI students' sense of belonging in computing [29].…”

Section: Sense Of Belonging In Csmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Sense of Belonging and Student Outcomes in CS1 and Beyond

Krause-Levy

Griswold

Porter

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

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Students' sense of belonging has been found to be connected to student retention in higher education. In computing education, prior studies suggest that a hostile culture and a feeling of nonbelonging can lead women, Black, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander students to drop out of the computing field at a disproportionately high rate. Yet, we know relatively little about how computing students' sense of belonging presents and evolves (if at all) through their college courses, particularly in courses beyond the introductory level, and little is known about how sense of belonging impacts student outcomes in computing. In an extension of a previous study, we examined students' sense of belonging in six early undergraduate computer science courses across three consecutive quarters at a large research-intensive institution in North America. We found that women and first generation students have a lower incoming sense of belonging across all courses. When exploring sense of belonging's tie to student outcomes we found that lower sense of belonging was correlated with negative course outcomes in terms of pass rates and course performance. We also found that it is less tied to student performance as students get further into the CS curriculum. Surprisingly, there was no indication that sense of belonging is predictive of retention in terms of persistence to the next CS course outside of the first course in our two-course CS1 sequence. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Computing Education.

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Exploring Sense of Belonging in Computer Science Students

Cited by 20 publications

References 3 publications

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on computing students' sense of belonging

The Relationship Between Sense of Belonging and Student Outcomes in CS1 and Beyond

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