2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The importance of focusing on informal learning settings to broaden participation in computer science (CS) education has been emphasized by multiple organizations, including the National Science Foundation, for decades (Bevan, Calabrese Barton, & Garibay, 2018). Public and youth engagement with STEM fields is critical to raising awareness, fostering interest in future career opportunities, and maintaining U.S. competitiveness in these areas. The #### project, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, was designed to address this challenge and broaden participation in CS among Latino and Spanish-speaking students by teaching them programming through music mixing. Developed through a collaboration between [University 1] and [University 2], the project is grounded in a robust partnership and our collective commitment to expanding access to STEM learning. Our work included the implementation of a range of technological, curricular, and research innovations aimed at creating an effective informal learning experience that fostered students’ computational thinking and strengthened their sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and intention to persist in CS. The technological innovation included the addition of Latin-American musical elements to the platform, as well as the creation of a multi-lingual function that allowed students to switch languages with ease. We also created, implemented, and assessed bilingual informal CS learning programs for middle and high school students, in the form of afterschool and summer camps in Atlanta and Puerto Rico. The curriculum involved best practices from culturally relevant and sustaining education (Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris, 2012; Kapor Center, 2021) and a motivational badging strategy aligned with the K-12 CS framework (2016). Lastly, we developed Spanish-English attitudinal instruments using cultural equivalency guidelines (Bravo-Vick et al., 2019) that ensured semantic and cross-cultural validity.

This paper describes the major activities outlined above, and undertaken by the project, including: (1) the technological innovations developed for the EarSketch programming platform, (2) the curriculum development process and key features of the final curriculum, (3) the research methodology used to design bilingual attitudinal surveys and other instruments, and (4) the collaborative process between researchers in Atlanta and Puerto Rico that was essential to maintaining a strong partnership and aligning overall project goals with local needs. The study also highlights major results from the program, including student gains in computational thinking skills and programming concept use, as evidenced by their coding outputs. Finally, we will discuss factors influencing these outcomes and students’ perceptions of cultural congruity and engagement, and the importance of addressing these dimensions in future research.