STRATEGIES, ENVIRONMENTS, AND EXPERIENCES THAT ADVANCE BPC
Ongoing and nationwide initiatives to broaden participation in computing (BPC) have accelerated the generation of BPC research, bringing a wealth of empirical evidence that may inform policies and practices in computing education. With so much knowledge to sift through and to synthesize, the computing education community is anxious to know what works (or does not) in advancing BPC. With support from Google.org, our team draws from the Undergraduate BPC Literature Database (UBLD) and builds upon our recent quantitative methodological review (QMR) of BPC scholarship to investigate what works in advancing BPC. To do so, we first focus on identifying what BPC strategies, environments, and experiences (SEEs) have been studied (from 2005-2023) and to what extent these SEEs have been studied. We then examine the sophistication of methodological approaches and the extent that the studies of these SEEs have centered BPC. By triangulating these three objectives, we finally aim to provide data visualizations and a summary report of our findings, including our findings on the extent to which we can suggest that certain SEEs either work (or do not) in advancing BPC. Ultimately, we hope the findings from this project will work in tandem with the UBLD and our QMR to offer a robust resource to inform future research, practices, and policies to promote opportunities for all in computing and technology.
This project uses a systematic content analysis of 153 quantitative articles refined from the UBLD. We developed a robust review instrument to code each article for items pertaining to the extent to which SEEs have been studied, the methodologies used to examine these SEEs, and how groups who are underrepresented in computing were centered in these SEEs. Each article was reviewed by two researchers with built-in checkpoints for reviewers to discuss memos and finalize coding. Once content analysis was conducted for all articles, we cleaned the data in preparation for data analysis and visualization.
We are currently in the process of analyzing our data in preparation for data visualization. These data visualizations will focus on 1) illuminating what and to what extent BPC SEEs have been studied, 2) the methodological sophistication of SEEs that have been studied, and 3) how BPC groups were included in analysis. Using the findings from these data visualizations, we will then generate a summary report that summarizes our overall findings and provide specific findings for each category of SEEs identified through this project. These specific findings will highlight what potentially works (or does not) in advancing BPC as well as offer future directions for research to generate empirical evidence for SEEs that are currently understudied.