Work

Alignment of Goals and Perceptions of Computing Predicts Students' Sense of Belonging in Computing

Year: 2019

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: The lack of diversity has been a troubling issue for the field of computing. As the industry continues to expand, it is imperative that diversity levels in computing fields increase to fill the ever-growing number of computing jobs and to represent the technological needs of a diverse populace. Our research seeks to better understand the factors that lead to this lack of diversity by analyzing data from computing majors from colleges within the United States and Canada. Our study reveals that students of different demographic backgrounds have varying levels of communal values, which, depending on how they perceive the affordance of computing to fulfill such values, predict their sense of belonging in computing, which is an important predictor of student retention.

Source: ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER)

DOI: 10.1145/3291279.3339426

Authors: Colleen Lewis, Paul Bruno, Jonathan Raygoza, Julia Wang

Institutions: Harvey Mudd College, University of Southern California

Language: English

Topic: Career Development and Diversity

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Quality education, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Science Foundation