Teaching Inclusively in Computer Science

When I teach, I want everyone to succeed and master the material, and I think that everyone in the course can.  I only have so much time to work with and guide the students through the material, so how should I spend this time?  What can I do to maximize student mastery?  Are there seemingly neutral actions that might impact some students more than others?  For example, before class this fall, I would chat with the students who were there early, sometimes about computer games.  Does those conversations create an impression that "successful programmers play computer games"?  To these questions, I want to revisit a pair of posts from the past year about better including the students.

The first is a Communications of the ACM post from the beginning of this year.  It listed several seemingly neutral decisions that can bias against certain groups.  Maintain a tone of voice that suggests every question is valuable and not "I've already explained that so why don't you get it".  As long as they are doing their part in trying to learn, then the failure is on me the communicator.

The second is a Mark Guzdial post on Active Learning.  The proposition is that using traditional lecture-style advantages the privileged students.  And a key thing to remember is that most of us are the privileged, so even though I and others have "succeeded" in that setting, it may have been despite the system and not because of the teaching.  Regardless of the instructor, the teaching techniques themselves have biases to different groups.  So if we want students to master the material, then perhaps we should teach differently.

Active learning has a growing body of research that shows using these teaching techniques help more students to succeed at mastering a course, especially the less privileged students.  Perhaps slightly less material is "covered", but students will learn and retain far more.  Isn't that better?

Improving Computer Science Education

Recently in the news are two articles that relate to improving Computer Science Education.  It is valuable to broaden the base of students who understand the basics of computing, just as students are expected to know Chemistry or Calculus.  In fact in my biased opinion, knowing the basics of computing and programming will have greater practical benefit to students; however, it should never be at the expense of a diverse education.

The White House announced that the 7 largest school districts will be including Computer Science in their curriculum.  This will quickly lead to another problem of who will teach the Computer Science classes.  Not me, but I am interested in teaching the teachers.  I do want to see Computer Science as an actual specialty (endorsement) for Education majors.

Another aspect of broadening the base is retaining students enrolled in the major.  Being part of the majority, it is difficult for me to know the challenges faced by other groups.  Similarly, I know why I entered Computer Science, so I would like to understand why others have too.  Why are they passionate or interested in this field that I am a part of?  Here are some things minority students have to say about STEM.

Computer Science Diversity

I attended a top program in Computer Science, where the gender split was 60 / 40.  Then I worked for five years at a major company.  Therefore, my expectation is always that anyone regardless of their gender, race, etc can succeed in Computer Science.  Now, recently there was a short lived Barbie book about being a computer engineer.  Ignoring any semantics about Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Computer Engineering being different disciplines, the work still did not portray women in the more technical efforts.  I'd rather read a collegue's remix of the work.

In a different vein of diversity, as a white male, I have been regularly been excluded from tech events because I dislike the taste of alcohol.  Thus at the (especially) frequent events in industry settings where alcohol is served, I was not socializing with my colleagues, and instead would inevitably find myself back at my desk working.  As a consequence, I was effectively excluded from the event.  And now in academia, I find myself attending conferences, where the social events are also touted for serving alcohol.  I have no issue with serving alcohol, rather it is the near exclusivity of which the drink options trend that way.  Thus a recent article struck a chord in the continuing desirability of extending the options and respecting the decision (for whatever reason) to not drink alcohol.