As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly prevalent in society, there is a critical need for accessible K-12 educational resources that introduce students to AI and robotics concepts through engaging, hands-on experiences. In this paper, we present a scalable workshop framework that uses narrative-driven problem solving to teach fundamental AI and autonomous systems concepts to students in grades 5-12. Developed through a collaboration between AI researchers and education specialists, Bot Blitz employs Sphero RVR+ robots within immersive storylines ranging from fairground rescue missions for younger students to urban traffic management scenarios for high schoolers. Preliminary observations from workshops with 56 students show high engagement levels and successful completion of programming challenges.

This paper examines how the Alliance for Interdisciplinary Innovation in Computing Education (AiiCE) partnership operationalized the eight Collective Impact Principles of Practice to advance identity-inclusive computing education. Identity-inclusive practices actively recognize and integrate students' diverse identities into curricula, pedagogy, and institutional structures to promote more inclusive learning cultures. Principles were utilized to cultivate a learning culture and co-develop a common agenda during their formative stages, addressing persistent structural barriers in computer science (CS) education such as exclusionary curricula, biased departmental cultures, and inequitable data systems. The research employs a qualitative design, analyzing interviews with Steering Committee and Backbone members (N=8) alongside program documents (N=25) to trace the partnership's application of core principles, such as equity-centered design, community inclusion, and data-driven adaptation, to embed identity-inclusive practices in CS education ecosystems. Findings reveal that the partnership's success hinged on interdependent strategies: embedding structural accountability into its shared vision for computing education and fostering continuous learning through cross-sector collaboration and localized tools. Key innovations included governance design that center community voices in CS and a constellation model that facilitated knowledge exchange across CS research, policy, professional development, and curricula and pedagogy. However, limitations emerged, such as uneven leadership development. The study contributes to collective impact research by demonstrating how Principles of Practice can be integrated in cross-sector partnerships for CS education.

This Birds of a Feather (BoF) session brings together computing educators, administrators, and graduate students to explore innovative approaches for creating supportive learning environments in computer science education. Building on the success of the Cultural Competence in Computing (3C) Fellows program, which has cultivated a community of over 250 computing professionals, this session provides a structured framework for addressing current challenges in computing education and developing effective teaching strategies. Participants will engage in dynamic discussions and collaborative activities examining successful pedagogical approaches, sharing implementation experiences, and exploring evidence-based practices for improving student outcomes. The session format includes focused breakout groups organized by geographical region, allowing participants to network with colleagues facing similar institutional challenges. Each group will include experienced educators who have successfully implemented innovative teaching practices, facilitating knowledge transfer and mentorship opportunities. Through guided discussions, participants will identify key obstacles in their educational environments and develop practical solutions based on peer experiences and proven methodologies. The BoF concludes with a collaborative planning session where participants will develop actionable steps for implementing new teaching approaches at their institutions. This session emphasizes building sustainable professional networks and communities of practice, enabling ongoing collaboration and resource sharing. Attendees will gain practical insights into educational innovation, forge valuable professional connections, and develop specific strategies to advance the work at their home institutions. This session particularly benefits educators seeking to implement research-based improvements in computing education.

We present an empirical evaluation of immersion and self-avatars as compared to desktop viewing in Virtual Reality (VR) for learning computer programming and computational thinking in middle school education using an educational VR simulation. Students were asked to programmatically choreograph dance performances for virtual characters within an educational desktop application we built earlier called Virtual Environment Interactions (VEnvI). As part of a middle school science class, 90 students from the 6th and 7th grades participated in our study. All students first visually programmed dance choreography for a virtual character they created in VEnvI on a laptop. Then, they viewed and interacted with the resulting dance performance in a between-subjects design in one of the three conditions. We compared and contrasted the benefits of embodied immersive virtual reality (EVR) viewing utilizing a head-mounted display with a body-scaled and gender-matched self-avatar, immersive virtual reality only (IVR) viewing, and desktop VR (NVR) viewing with VEnvI on pedagogical outcomes, programming performance, presence, and attitudes towards STEM and computational thinking. Results from a cognition questionnaire showed that, in the learning dimensions of Knowledge and Understanding (Bloom's taxonomy) as well as Multistructural (SOLO taxonomy), participants in EVR and IVR scored significantly higher than NVR. Also, participants in EVR scored significantly higher than IVR. We also discovered similar results in objective programming performance and presence scores in VEnvI. Furthermore, students' attitudes towards computer science, programming confidence, and impressions significantly improved to be the highest in EVR and then IVR as compared to NVR condition. Our work suggests that educators and developers of educational VR simulations, who want to enhance knowledge and understanding as well as simultaneous acquisition of multiple abstract concepts, can do so by employing immersion and self-avatars in VR learning experiences.

The issues related to a lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion in computing are, in part, due to a lack of understanding of identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, and sexuality), intersectionality, and their impact on both technology consumers and creators from minoritized groups. Identity-inclusive computing (IIC) explores how identity impacts and is impacted by computing. This growing area of research blends social science with computer science to infuse topics related to identity, intersectionality, racism, bias, and discrimination throughout the discipline. IIC has the potential to transform computing to create not only more equitable and inclusive environments for people from diverse identities, but also reduce development of biased/harmful technologies. This transformation requires a community of educators who are working to (un)learn topics related to identity and apply this knowledge to curricula, training, research, policy, and other department initiatives. This Birds of a Feather session convenes educators, advocates, and graduate students to discuss activities and lessons learned from the past year, strategies for beginning/sustaining this work, and future opportunities. The session will directly contribute to a growing community of practice dedicated to creating systemic change across university computing departments worldwide through IIC education, while also providing opportunities for attendees to remain connected outside of SIGCSE

Navigating the intersection of both race and gender can be difficult for Black women in academia, especially when they lack representation, and proper support, which forces many to "learn on the fly." This panel convenes Black women in diverse faculty positions to discuss pursuing and persisting in academic careers, including career path considerations, identifying and mitigating challenges, mentorship and networking, balancing expectations with authenticity, and making institution and/or career changes.

Fully autonomous or “self-driving” vehicles are an emerging technology that may hold tremendous mobility potential for individuals who are visually impaired who have been previously disadvantaged by an inability to operate conventional motor vehicles. Prior studies however, have suggested that these consumers have significant concerns regarding the accessibility of this technology and their ability to effectively interact with it. We present the results of a quasi-naturalistic study, conducted on public roads with 20 visually impaired users, designed to test a self-driving vehicle human–machine interface. This prototype system, ATLAS, was designed in participatory workshops in collaboration with visually impaired persons with the intent of satisfying the experiential needs of blind and low vision users. Our results show that following interaction with the prototype, participants expressed an increased trust in self-driving vehicle technology, an increased belief in its likely usability, an increased desire to purchase it and a reduced fear of operational failures. These findings suggest that interaction with even a simulated self-driving vehicle may be sufficient to ameliorate feelings of distrust regarding the technology and that existing technologies, properly combined, are promising solutions in addressing the experiential needs of visually impaired persons in similar contexts.

The ability to select or customize characters in educational applications and games has been shown to influence factors related to learning effects such as transfer, self-efficacy, and motivation. Most previous conclusions on the perception of virtual characters and the effect of character assignment in interactive applications have been reached through short, one-task experiments. To investigate more long-term effects of assigning versus customizing characters as well as explore perceptions of personal character appearance, we conduct a study in which sixth and seventh grade students are introduced to programming concepts with the software VEnvI (Virtual Environment Interactions) in seven one-hour sessions over two weeks. In VEnvI, students create performances for virtual characters by assembling blocks. With a between-subjects design, in which some of the students can alter their character and others are not given that possibility, we examine the influence of the presence or absence of character choice options on learning.

Fifty-four middle school girls were a part of weeklong program geared towards encouraging young women in STEM careers. During a two-day computer science intervention, we introduced students to our VEnvI software where students program virtual characters to perform choreography. During this time, students were introduced programming concepts: sequencing, loops, and variables. They also spent time performing to learn some of the movements in VEnvI and discussed different aspects of the VEnvI software design including motion capture & Unity 3D Development. The latter conversations were couched in relation to being a computer scientist. Data were collected from the students on the first day of the camp as well as at the end of the second day. Each student was given a piece of paper that only contained a code corresponding to her. The instructions were to write, "What do computer scientists do?" on one side of the page, and to draw a picture of a computer scientist on the other side. Our findings suggest that, at least in the short term, this type of intervention can impact students' perceptions of computer science as well as broaden their perspectives of computer scientists. More students drew female computer scientists in the post-test and showed computer scientists working in teams rather than alone. Further, students' ideas of what computer scientists "do" shifted from fixing computers and making websites to creating, designing, and inventing with computers.

As the conversation for broadening participation in computer science expands, the need for diversity among computing students becomes clearer. Yet, each year at SIGCSE, there are very few opportunities for people working with, or interested in working with students of color at the K-12 AND university levels to share experiences and collaborate on how to best support our students. This BOF will provide a platform for not only discussing effective, culturally relevant approaches to teaching computer science to students of color, but also addressing questions and concerns of people serving this demographic.

We detail the design, implementation, and an initial evaluation of a virtual reality education and entertainment (edutainment) application called Virtual Environment Interactions (VEnvI). VEnvI is an application in which students learn computer science concepts through the process of choreographing movement for a virtual character using a fun and intuitive interface. In this exploratory study, 54 participants as part of a summer camp geared towards promoting participation of women in science and engineering programmatically crafted a dance performance for a virtual human. A subset of those students participated in an immersive embodied interaction metaphor in VEnvI. In creating this metaphor that provides first-person, embodied experiences using self-avatars, we seek to facilitate engagement, excitement and interest in computational thinking. We qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated the extent to which the activities of the summer camp, programming the dance moves, and the embodied interaction within VEnvI facilitated students' edutainment, presence, interest, excitement, and engagement in computing, and the potential to alter their perceptions of computing and computer scientists. Results indicate that students enjoyed the experience and successfully engaged the virtual character in the immersive embodied interaction, thus exhibiting high telepresence and social presence. Students also showed increased interest and excitement regarding the computing field at the end of their summer camp experience using VEnvI.

Realistic versus stylized depictions of virtual humans in simulated inter-personal situations and their ability to elicit emotional responses in users has been an open question for artists and researchers alike. We empirically evaluated the effects of near visually realistic vs. non-realistic stylized appearance of virtual humans on the emotional response of participants in a medical virtual reality system that was designed to educate users in recognizing the signs and symptoms of patient deterioration. In a between-subjects experiment protocol, participants interacted with one of three different appearances of a virtual patient, namely visually realistic, cartoon-shaded and charcoal-sketch like conditions in a mixed reality simulation. Emotional impact were measured via a combination of quantitative objective measures were gathered using skin Electrodermal Activity (EDA) sensors, and quantitative subjective measures such as the Differential Emotion Survey (DES IV), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and Social Presence questionnaire. The emotional states of the participants were analyzed across four distinct time steps during which the medical condition of the virtual patient deteriorated (an emotionally stressful interaction), and were contrasted to a baseline affective state. Objective EDA results showed that in all three conditions, male participants exhibited greater levels of arousal as compared to female participants. We found that negative affect levels were significantly lower in the visually realistic condition, as compared to the stylized appearance conditions. Furthermore, in emotional dimensions of interest-excitement, surprise, anger, fear and guilt participants in all conditions responded similarly. However, in social emotional constructs of shyness, presence, perceived personality, and enjoyment-joy, we found that participants responded differently in the visually realistic condition as compared to the cartoon and sketch conditions. Our study suggests that virtual human appearance can affect not only critical emotional reactions in affective inter-personal training scenarios. but also users' perceptions of personality and social characteristic of the virtual interlocutors.

n this paper, we introduce an embodied pedagogical approach for learning computational concepts, utilizing computational practices, and developing computational perspectives. During a five-week pilot, a group of students spent after-school time learning the basic elements of dance and then using them to program three-dimensional characters that could perform. Throughout the pilot, we found students consistently standing up in front of their computers and using their bodies to think through the actuation of their characters. Preliminary results suggest that designing a virtual-physical dance performance is a motivating and engaging social context in which to introduce students, especially girls, to alternative applications in computing.

We empirically examined the impact of virtual human animation on the emotional responses of participants in a medical virtual reality system for education in the signs and symptoms of patient deterioration. Participants were presented with one of two virtual human conditions in a between-subjects experiment, static (non-animated) and dynamic (animated). Our objective measures included the use of psycho-physical Electro Dermal Activity (EDA) sensors, and subjective measures inspired by social psychology research included the Differential Emotions Survey (DES IV) and Positive and Negative Affect Survey (PANAS). We analyzed the quantitative and qualitative measures associated with participants’ emotional state at four distinct time-steps in the simulated interpersonal experience as the virtual patient’s medical condition deteriorated. Results suggest that participants in the dynamic condition with animations exhibited a higher sense of co-presence and greater emotional response as compared to participants in the static condition, corresponding to the deterioration in the medical condition of the virtual patient. Negative affect of participants in the dynamic condition increased at a higher rate than for participants in the static condition. The virtual human animations elicited a stronger response in negative emotions such as anguish, fear, and anger as the virtual patient’s medical condition worsened.

Empathy is a fundamental component of positive and productive human relationships. In the context of civic engagement, the ability to "stand in the shoes of another" increases opportunities to avoid miscommunication and misunderstandings, to work together in cooperative settings, and, as a result create innovative solutions to social issues. In this proposal, we present a fourteen-week workshop being conducted with a diverse group of middle school children to use technology to foster the development of empathy and support civic engagement.