2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Broadening participation of Latinx students in computer science (CS) is paramount in today’s STEM educational landscape. Latinx represent the fastest growing population in the U.S. but are under-represented in computer science. The ##### project was developed to tackle issues of broadening participation in CS to Latinx students through implementing an informal learning program that utilizes *****, a successful CS outreach platform, and adapted it into a more linguistically accessible and culturally relevant learning tool for Latinx and Spanish speaking students. The current paper describes the program components, including the summer camp curriculum, and provides evaluation results from the pilot summer program implementation, held in Atlanta and Puerto Rico, and conducted during the pandemic in July of 2021.

The bilingual (Spanish and English) curriculum was developed using best practices from the Culturally Relevant Education Framework (CRE) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) and was aligned with CSTA standards. It provides authentic, fluid, culturally and linguistic rich opportunities for student engagement by establishing direct and constant connections to students’ cultures, communities and lived experiences while at the same time they learn CS topics such as variables, events, and debugging.

Due to the pandemic, all summer camps were conducted virtually. Two camps were held at each location (Atlanta and Puerto Rico) with the first week of camp reserved for middle school students and the second week of camp reserved for high school students. Over the course of the two-week period, 17 students in Atlanta and 39 students in Puerto Rico participated. Both locations implemented the same curriculum but structured the programming with some differences depending on individual needs. At the end of each week, participants from Puerto Rico and Atlanta gathered virtually with program staff and students’ families and friends for a celebration where students shared their musical creations, selected specifically for the event.

Students who participated in the research study were invited to complete three survey instruments (intake, pre- and post-). The development of these bilingual instruments was informed by previous research on translation, cross-cultural adaptation, instrument validation in a cultural context, and it followed a cultural equivalency process. The instruments included questions about students’ prior experiences with computing and music technology, as well as exploring their perceptions with regards to various attitudinal, socio-cognitive, and motivational constructs.

Preliminary evaluation results suggest these one-week summer camps were effective in impacting pre-post students’ sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and intention to persist in computer science. Results also show the presence of some interesting gender differences with regards to the source of sense of belonging and self-efficacy. Girls demonstrated higher levels of intention to persist at the end of the program compared to boys, but boys seem to be at a higher risk for ethnicity-related perceived threat. The study suggests the presence of gender and ethnic intersectional phenomena which may manifest itself in special ways in this program, since several program components require students to be artistically expressive and creative, in addition to using computational thinking skills.