A key problem in achieving access to and sustained presence in computing and computing education (CEd) in the United States is environments that are all too often designed in ways that are harmful and inequitable toward systemically minoritized communities. While various scholars have explored ways to design equitable spaces within differing contexts, often, equity is framed merely as an issue of access. This dismisses the lived experiences of minoritized communities and can lead to shallow perspectives of equity that fail to address community concerns and further push these communities out of sustained participation and presence in computing and CEd. Drawing from a critical and abolitionist lens, we argue that equitable spaces must nurture community: where healing, joy, and care are centered, and participants can bring their full selves into the space. In this experience report, we present three case narratives highlighting the spaces we designed to build community. The case narratives describe: (1) conference workshops on centering equity in CEd, (2) a workshop series enabling marginalized people to share stories of their experiences in CEd, and (3) a podcast inviting voices from varied contexts, experiences, and backgrounds to share their stories and perspectives on themes related to equity within CEd. The case narratives point to the value of designing spaces that go beyond granting access, emphasizing spaces that nurture community. Our approach fostered a sense of comfort, mutual trust, and the bravery to (re)imagine other possibilities, empowering participants to discuss issues of equity within the spaces they occupy.

Systems of power - such as structural racism, a system that upholds the ideology of white supremacy - are invisible and permeate our everyday lives and un/intentionally into our research. As these systems influence what counts as 'successful' work, CSEd researchers often have to assimilate ('whiten') themselves and their work into dominant ideals that uphold these structures. This workshop brings together aspiring and early-career CSEd researchers to critically examine and unpack the impacts of systems of power on ourselves and our research practices. Such examination is necessary to strive towards a critical consciousness in the field. We investigate critical questions like the following: What are systems of power? Who has the right to participate? Who has the right to exclude? We will use group-based activities that center historicities and 'outsider' knowledge to examine CSEd research practices and theories to answer these questions. We will draft a set of guidelines and recommendations available to the broader CSEd research community from the discussions and activities.

Modern learning theories emphasize the critical social aspect of learning. Computer science (CS) classrooms often have "defensive climates'' that inhibit social learning and prevent the development of a community of learners. We believe that we can improve the social context of computer science learning by expanding CS learning beyond the single student in front of a display screen. Our theory is that the single student and single display inhibits collaboration and collaborative awareness of student work. In this paper, we present two case studies where we explored ways to make student work visible to peers. The first case study involved using a studio model for learning enabled by projection-based Augmented Reality (AR), and the second case study involves using a maker-oriented curriculum to make student work visible. Findings suggest the visibility of student work in CS classrooms helped support a community of learners: students collaborated, used each other as sources of inspiration, and felt more comfortable asking for help.

Walk into a CS1 classroom and you may see instructors communicating the properties of some abstract CS concept through gesture. Students may try to understand how a piece of code executes by sketching a code trace, drawing arrows and crossing out values while using spatial language like, …afterwards, the code comes back up here and then goes back down.

Socioeconomic status (SES) has a measurable impact on many educational outcomes and likely also influences computer science (CS) achievement. We present a novel model to account for the observed connections between SES and CS achievement. We examined possible mediating variables between SES and CS achievement, including spatial ability and access to computing. We define access as comprised of measurements of prior learning opportunities for computing, perceptions of computer science, and encouragement to pursue computing. The factors (SES, spatial ability, access to computing, and CS achievement) were measured through surveys completed by 163 students in introductory computing courses at a college level. Through the use of exploratory structural equation modeling, we found that these variables do impact each other, though not as we originally hypothesized. For our sample of students, we found spatial ability was a mediating variable for SES and CS achievement, but access to computing was not. Neither model explained all the variance, and our subject pool of US college students had higher than average SES. Our findings suggest that SES does influence success in computer science, but that relationship may not be due to access to computing education opportunities. Rather, SES might be influencing variables such as spatial ability which in turn influence CS performance.

Gestures, or spontaneous hand movements produced when talking, are an untapped resource for understanding student knowledge in computing education. This paper develops a conceptual framework to support future studies of learning and teaching that incorporate gesture studies in programming contexts. In particular, this paper introduces how gesture has been used to study teaching and learning in another discipline, mathematics; critically reviews and interprets what concepts and methods may be most relevant to programming contexts; and also discusses what unique challenges programming contexts present to studies of gesture (e.g. differences in abstract versus concrete). We ground our understandings of gesture by using an observational study where we observed novice students learning to program. This paper concludes by suggesting potential avenues for future research in computing education that incorporate analyses of gesture in studies of teaching and learning.

Computer science teachers want to know what their students are and are not learning and understanding. Gestures, or spontaneous hand movements produced when talking, could help teachers understand what their students are thinking. During communication, gestures often reflect thoughts not expressed when people talk (Goldin-Meadow & Wagner, 2005). Listeners can then extract meaningful information from the gestures they see. When learning computer science, gestures may be an external representation of students' understandings of code. In this research, we conducted a qualitative study observing and interviewing a high school CS class to understand how and when gestures were used. When students trace code, their gestures show how well they understand the code's execution. In another context when students described their code to the teacher or other students, the students' gestures showed how abstracted their knowledge was. Students who understood their code made more general gestures, while struggling students made pointing gestures for each line of their code. These findings suggest that teachers could use students' gestures as a formative assessment to understand how well their students are learning.

Parents' engagement in their children's education is key to children's academic success and social development. For many parents in the U.S., engagement is still a struggle partly due to a lack of communication and community-building tools that support the broader ecology of parenting, or parental ecology. Although current technologies have the potential to create opportunities to improve parental engagement, little is known about the impact of existing technology's design on the parental ecology. We present findings from 63 interviews with parents and an observation of existing technologies that support parent-school interactions. We found four critical issues that the design of current technologies need to address: (1) inflexibility in the boundaries of digital spaces, (2) inequality, (3) fragmentation and inconsistency of information, and (4) lack of relevant non-academic information. As a result, we propose design guidelines for technologies to support the parental ecology, and reflect on design issues that require further research.

Spatial reasoning may be a strong predictor for a career in Computer Science (CS) [9]. However, it is unclear why and how spatial abilities lead to success in CS. Investigating the role of spatial reasoning in learning CS may be important for broadening participation. Most students who excel in CS are white males or students from a high socioeconomic status (SES) [2, 5]. These same students typically score higher on spatial reasoning tests than their peers [1]. Thus spatial reasoning may be another factor preventing marginalized communities from succeeding in CS.

Spatial reasoning concerns the locations of objects, their shapes, their relations to each other, and the paths they take as they move. People with high spatial reasoning scores are more likely to major in degrees in STEM disciplines and go into STEM careers than those with low scores. Spatial reasoning tends to be low amongst students of low socioeconomic status. We need to understand the the relationship between spatial reasoning, socioeconomic status, and success in learning computer science. If there are causal relationships among these variables, we will need appropriate interventions in order to broaden participation and improve success in computing education.

The goal of this project is to use projection augmented reality to add design studio learning models to a classroom for an introductory Media Computation computer science class. Students do classwork using an enhanced version of Pythy, a web IDE for Python and Jython, that captures students' work and displays it around the room. We leverage the Microsoft RoomAlive Toolkit to construct a room-scale augmented reality using pairs of projectors and depth cameras. The system “pins” students' work to the walls, where teachers and students can see and discuss the work. We hope that by seeing each other's work, the system will foster collaboration and support the creation of STEM learning experiences that encourage creativity, innovation, and help build strong peer learning environments.