2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

When students see themselves reflected in the computing curriculum they are learning from, engagement is increased and students can be empowered to envision themselves as computer scientists. To investigate computing curriculum for the potential for diverse students to see themselves reflected in the lessons, we utilize the presence of diverse avatars within Snap! programs as a simple proxy for this representation. In this work, we investigate the avatars in over 300 computing-infused lessons created by teachers during an infusing computing professional development program and by high school interns during an educational software development internship. Specifically, we consider the demographics (gender, race, and age) of these avatars and what factors of the creators or projects may correlate with certain types of avatars. We investigate the following research questions: 1) How do computing-infused lessons created by teachers and high school interns differ in inclusion and usage of avatars? and 2) How do creator and avatar demographics correlate? In our analysis, we found that the teachers were more likely to include avatars of color that the high school interns. Teachers were also more likely to use preloaded images for their avatars. We also found correlations between creator gender and avatar gender, creator race and avatar gender, and creator gender and avatar race. This findings can help us to design trainings for computing-infused curricula creators with a goal of creating lessons with more representation by understanding the tendencies of creators when it comes to avatar representation.