This work-in-progress innovative practice paper presents an interactive visual map tool called 1 GenSuccess, designed for first-generation computer science students. First-generation college students are students whose parents or guardians have not attended college or earned a college degree. In the United States, first-generation students account for over 40% of first-year college students, making them a significant demo-graphic in the engineering and computing educational field. How-ever, due to a lack of parental familiarity with higher education, limited understanding of the college admissions process, finan-cial constraints, internships, and the challenges associated with engineering and computing coursework, first-generation students in the field of engineering and computing frequently encounter distinctive obstacles across academic, finance, career, cultural, and social dimensions. Recognizing the difficulties these students face, this paper introduces 1 GenSuccess, a novel roadmap web application developed specifically for first-generation college stu-dents in the engineering and computing fields. While numerous web sites currently offer a range of valuable resources to support first-generation college students, a significant gap persists-a lack of a personalized roadmap explicitly crafted to meet the distinct needs and challenges they experience on their computer science educational journey. The primary goal of 1 GenSucccess is to empower engineering students and facilitate their navigation through academia through a visual roadmap. In addition, by presenting a comprehensive suite of resources, support materials, and a personalized roadmap, 1 GenSuccess aims to bridge the gaps in access and information that often impede the progress of first-generation college students in the computer science field.

This Innovative Practice Paper describes the results from the 2019 Work-in-Progress (WIP) [1] proposal for a pre-college physical computing workshop aimed at under-served students. Recruiting under-served students into engineering and computer science activities can pose a challenge, as such activities are often viewed as complicated, boring, or exclusionary. We designed the workshop to mitigate these notions. Since students enroll in the workshop to create a collaborative digital art display versus enrolling in a strictly "coding" workshop, we sought to alleviate their unfamiliar or intimidating feelings towards engineering. Placing the workshop in a familiar location within the community was another strategy to create a reassuring environment designed to increase students’ feelings of belonging. Additionally, integrating elements of software engineering professional practice (EPP) gave students a glimpse of the "real world" vocation to increase their affinity for engineering practices. We incorporate physical computing because it can increase motivation and self-efficacy in primary school students [2], and it pairs well with art to use custom-coded light, movement, and interaction as different media for creativity. Our goal in providing this workshop was to explore the following question: What is the impact of exposure to engineering design and professional practice through a collaborative workshop, which centers on art and physical computing, on increasing affinity toward engineering among 5th-8th graders in an under-served community? Twenty-eight students, ages 9 through 13 participated in a novel collaborative art-based engineering design workshop. Students were taught techniques in arts and crafts and coding Arduino and Circuit Playground Express micro-controllers utilizing sensors and LEDs. After the instructional phase, we teamed students to design, code, apply electronic fundamentals, and craft designs to create the final art display. The cumulative, resulting tech-art installation was an immersive, interactive exhibit hosted at a community library for one week. By using EPP elements to produce an exhibit aimed at community consumers, students develop a greater appreciation for engineering practices and receive positive feedback from their community. We examined the students’ self-perception and affinity for engineering through pre and post student surveys and interviews. Their responses to interview prompts showed an increase in using engineering terms and principles. The survey questions revealed changes in their self-perception ratings in various categories.

This Research-to-Practice Work in Progress paper presents a recent professional development for high school computer science teachers. The court system increasingly relies on algorithms to rate a criminal defendant's likelihood of recidivism. These algorithms utilize machine learning models tuned on biased datasets, resulting in false assessments. There are several other alerting examples of how a software engineer's personal bias affects their design and development of technology. This bias leads to poor usability of technology for underserved groups. Data science applies machine learning on massive datasets to invent new technology to improve everyday life from healthcare to consumer needs. Designing and developing data science solutions for a diverse population requires an unbiased approach. Data feminism, which emerges from the intersecting fields of data science and feminist theory, presents a methodology to solve data science problems given three principles: 1) invent new ways to represent data unknowns, 2) invent new ways to reference the material economy behind the data, 3) make dissent possible. In this paper, we present a case study on a week-long online professional development for computer science high school teachers on data science using a data feminist lens. We discuss the data science tools and technology taught during the weeklong event. We share examples of the data feminism principles and class exercises. The computer science teachers also participated in community building activities. The culminating weeklong challenge was to analyze an earthquake dataset, which included themes of socioeconomic disparity within a city. The teachers worked in teams to explore this dataset with the new data science techniques and recommend resource management solutions for a city's earthquake response. In this paper, we explore the question: how the participating computer science high school teachers incorporate data feminism into their data science pipeline? We analyze the audio transcripts collected during the week to create visual analytics on our findings. We consider the impacts of culturally responsive approaches to computer science K-12 curriculum and future professional development in this space.

This Research Work in Progress paper presents preliminary results on an interactive visualization tool intended for university students to explore different motivational reasons to graduate from college timely. The statistics on the number of students who graduate from university “on-time” makes one wonder if the four-year completion rate is a myth. In reality, some statistics show less than a third graduate in four years, and almost half graduate by six years. Several reasons lead to needing more years to graduate. For example, graduation may be delayed due to the extra time required to repeat a failed or dropped course. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive methods for college students to analyze datasets on graduation rates and the effects on other aspects of their lives. In this paper, we examine whether an interactive visualization tool can inform students about the short-term and long-term life effects for extending their graduation from four years to five, six, or more years. The benefit for students to use this tool is to give them a holistic understanding of how their current time in college affects future opportunities. In addition, college mentors and advisers can share this tool with students during advising sessions. We assume our primary audience is a computer science major from “Anonymized University” and aggregate various datasets to design and implement an interactive visualization tool, called “Graduated Life Explore.” This tool helps students explore different motivational reasons on the advantages of graduating, as well as the possible risks and disadvantages of delaying their college graduation. We discuss several benefits including net costs, extracurricular activities, financial aid possibilities, career opportunities, retirement plans, health insurance, and more. These reasons are represented and encoded into our interactive visualization tool which employs multiple coordinated views on different datasets including timeline pie charts with interactive pop out charts. We explore the effectiveness of this interactive visualization tool through a usability study on students at “Anonymized University”.

This Innovative Practice Work in Progress Paper describes a summer physical computing workshop for underserved and under-exposed students. This study performs a novel collaborative art-based engineering project for 5th-8th grade students in Sacramento to introduce engineering design principles. Our goal in providing this workshop is to explore the following question: Does exposure to engineering design through a collaborative workshop which utilizes art and physical computing increase affinity toward engineering professional practice among 5th-8th graders in an under-served community? Physical computing projects encourage students to imagine, design, and build in the intersection of creative exploration and engineering. Such involvement with physical computing increases motivation and self-efficacy in primary school students. Utilizing familiar craft-based materials such as paper with coding and circuits can bridge the gap between the known world of arts and crafts and the unknown world of engineering-based design. Since students enroll into the workshop to create a collaborative digital art display versus enrolling into a strictly “coding” workshop, their unfamiliar or intimidating feelings towards engineering may be alleviated. Developing self-efficacy in engineering activities can play a vital role in developing engineering affinity for youth. Likewise, the development of engineering affinity is a crucial first step toward developing engineering identity. During the summer workshop, students utilize arts and crafts with Arduino, sensors, LEDs, and servos. They are tasked with incorporating agile engineering principles to code, apply electronic fundamentals, and basic craft designs to create the final art display. Through this process, students develop a greater understanding of engineering design process. The cumulative resulting art installation is an immersive, interactive pixel light show display. We examine the students' development of self-efficacy and engineering affinity by surveying the students before and after the workshop. We perform analytics to see if their responses to the survey questions and prompts increase in using engineering terms and principles and how their confidence rating changes in various categories. We brainstorm how under-served students' interests can be captured, maintained and expanded to include engineering. We present our current progress including our basis for survey design and methodology to examine our driving questions.

This Work in Progress Research Paper presents a visual analytic workflow to assist instructors of introductory computer science courses to manage their students' learning and success. Sometimes introductory college classes are notoriously called “weed-out” courses, which students who fall behind, are discouraged from continuing the career path. Students with different educational backgrounds may be unnecessarily defeated in these courses. In this work, we identify what class data can be collected and supplied to data analytic tooling to generate insights into monitoring the students' progress. We first investigate a variety of machine learning tools and techniques on a class dataset. Then, we present work-in-progress designs of a visual analytic workflow. Through the interaction with the visual analytic tool, instructors of the introductory computer science course gather insights into the class, for example, “Which part of the programming assignment is causing students to have the most software bugs?”, “Which exam questions best test the understanding of runtime analysis?”, “What type of student activity results in fascinating over 50% of the class to participate and understand the material”?