WIP: The Appeal of Computing for Social Good to Underrepresented Student Groups

This work in progress research paper describes preliminary results of a survey-based study with the goal of answering the research question: Are students in underrepresented race/ethnic groups more interested in and motivated by humanitarian applications of computing rather than non-humanitarian applications? The survey explores student interest and motivation by asking them to choose between humanitarian and non-humanitarian computing applications. The study builds on theories and prior studies that indicate that student learning is improved by providing context to learning in the form of authentic, collaborative engagement with the subject matter. The study also builds on prior research that indicates humanitarian applications may have special appeal to some student groups that are underrepresented in computing education. This prior work includes ad hoc observation by the authors and several small scale surveys that were administered to upper level computing students. Part of the motivation for this study was to see if the same preference for humanitarian applications was apparent with students taking introductory computing courses. Introductory computing students at four institutions completed the survey and the responses of 340 students were analyzed based upon their self-reported races/ethnicities. Students in all race/ethnic groups indicated a higher interest in and motivation by humanitarian applications over non-humanitarian options. In fact, all race/ethnic groups preferred humanitarian over non-humanitarian computing applications at the p<.001 level. In considering differences across race/ethnicities, results indicate that humanitarian applications of computing are particularly appealing to Black and Latinx students. In combination these results indicate that all student groups might be better engaged by course materials that provide a humanitarian context, and underrepresented Black and Latinx students might find the humanitarian connection particularly compelling. Based on these findings, instructors might consider framing programming examples and assignments with a humanitarian focus in order to engage students and potentially increase the number of underrepresented students studying computing.