2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Engaging Rural America in Computer Science: Understanding the Rural Context
Presented at Computers in Education Division (COED) Track 5.A
In the United States, 1 in 5 people, approximately 66.3 million individuals, live in a rural area. To address the growing need for computing professionals and the need for a computationally literate populace, we need to engage rural learners effectively. A first step in this direction is understanding the learning context for students engaging in computer science, and how that differs for a rural population. In this paper, we draw upon the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education, the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, and the 2021 American Community Survey, to underscore a lack of access to computer science learning contexts for students in these communities. We also explore how rural out-migration is compounding this challenge, and explore the roots of the rural out-migration trend.
We then examine how multiple strains of research and scholarship identify rurality as either a place-based identification (i.e., where a student is from) or a distinct social identity. While convenient, geographic-based definitions lack important nuance in understanding rural populations and tend to emphasize heterogeneity in rural populations, especially regarding economic factors (i.e., what the communities produce). In contrast, identity-based definitions often emphasize commonalities across rural populations including a set of shared values, a sense of belonging to a rural community, emphasis on social bonds, and a distrust of solutions offered by government, academia, and technology which are often seen as misguided and antithetical to those shared values. In certain kinds of decision-making, this rural identity has even been shown to overshadow intersectional racial and ethnic identities. This is an important consideration as 22\% of the US rural population is composed of racial and ethnic minorities.
Finally, we discuss strategies to engage with rural populations authentically and meaningfully. We offer as an illustrative example our Cyber Pipeline program, an outreach effort including a Creative Commons licensed, customizable, modular curriculum; extensive teacher preparation program; and ongoing support for K-12 teachers working to bring computer science into rural schools. We also describe reasons why these rural-dwelling teachers seek to provide computer science education for their students. We highlight the specific challenges of this program, as well as our identified promising practices, in the hopes of fostering similar programs across the United States.
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Joshua Levi Weese Kansas State University [biography]
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Dr. Michelle Friend University of Nebraska - Omaha [biography]
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Friday Emmanuel James Kansas State University [biography]
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Dr. David S. Allen Kansas State University [biography]
