This paper describes our experiences related to a culturally situated Artificial Intelligence (AI) education workshop for urban farmers. The farmers explored the concept of AI and its implications in the context of their own farm. They engaged in hands-on activities, including using traditional sensemaking practices in conjunction with sensor technology to collect contextual data. They then used a tangible educational tool: a corkboard with push pins and images to build tactile AI models based on their farm data. Throughout this process, they discussed their hopes and desires regarding AI in farming, and their concerns about AI technologies. The perspectives of the urban farmers reveal their preference for AI systems that are contextual, integrate community values, Indigenous knowledge, and environmental concerns, and are rooted in community ownership of data. Our report provides a starting point for conducting future workshops that involve 'critical participatory design' of AI technologies to promote AI literacies rooted in the community.

The majority of CS teachers in the U.S. are white. It is crucial to shift white CS teachers away from race avoidance and towards race-conscious literacies. Prior research in teacher education, computer science education, and the critical study of whiteness has found that recognition of their identities and role in race relations is important for authentic Culturally Responsive Computing (CRC) implementation. In this experience report, I describe in detail a professional development workshop that facilitated race-conscious literacies in computing spaces for white high-school CS teachers. In the initial phase of the workshop, the teachers explored their racial identities through photographs and facilitated dialogues surrounding systemic privileges. In the subsequent phase, the teachers explored a computational tool designed to prompt a reflection on the desegregation of public elementary schools. Following these engagements, the effectiveness of the workshop in establishing a space for race-conscious literacies was evaluated through guided discussion prompts and the creation of lesson plans by the teachers. In general, the teachers were able to confront and reconcile their racial identities, systemic privilege, and the tensions they encountered while navigating this topic, though to varying degrees. Their created lesson plans also had elements of race-consciousness raising exercises for their privileged students. Finally, I provide reflections on elements that worked well in the professional development workshop and those that could be improved for future adaptations by practitioners.

There is a pressing need for practices that work toward broadening Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) participation in computing, harness computing for BIPOC community goals, youth civic participation, activism, wealth generation, self-advocacy, and disruption of harmful biases and racist ideologies in computing. Thus, we first justify the need for justice-oriented courses in undergraduate Computer Science (CS) curricula. We then explore the current status of such courses in undergraduate CS. We do this by conducting a document analysis of the learning objectives, stan- dards, and CS course descriptions of the top 20 ranked universities in the U.S. We found that most courses that speak to the human and societal impacts of computing fell into the category of "Human- Computer Interaction". CS courses that explicitly focused on ethical issues, gender, racial, accessibility, and environmental justice were present at much lower numbers. Less than 50% of the top-ranked universities had such courses. If present, the proportion of such courses within a university's curricula was less than 5%. Most of the top-ranked universities subscribed to ABET's standards, which have a curricular requirement of understanding the local and global impacts of computing. Given our pressing needs, there is a need for more justice-oriented courses in undergraduate CS curricula. We describe possible ways to achieve this goal, such as hiring interdisciplinary CS faculty with African-American, Chican@, Indigenous, or gender studies, instructor professional development programs like AiiCE, and considering deep social impact standards, and better alignment with such standards

For the past ten years, computer science instructors have adopted Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). Other STEM disciplines have shown conclusively that POGIL impacts student learning and knowledge retention. However, most research about POGIL in computer science has focused on perceptions and experiences, not learning outcomes. In this study, we examined the influence of POGIL on student learning in CS1. We collected data from all sections of CS1 at the same institution. Four of the faculty implemented POGIL, and three taught with other active methods. The learning data included pre and post assessments, midterm and final exams, and a retention test at the beginning of the next course. Students also completed three surveys about their prior programming experience, sense of belonging, and perceptions of teamwork. We used multiple regression to analyze the relationship between the survey data and learning outcomes. Our results show that students in the POGIL sections outperformed students in the other sections. POGIL students scored higher on the post-test, and a higher proportion of them met the grade requirement to progress to the next course. After the five-week winter break, POGIL students had higher and more consistent scores on the retention test. These results provide evidence that POGIL can be very effective as an instructional technique in computer science.

Recent years have seen increased focus on integrating Computational Thinking (CT) across subject areas in lieu of treating it as a standalone subject. Over the course of two years, we focused on teacher development in a large city school system via summer workshops that brought in-service and pre-service teachers together to co-create integrated CT lessons. In this experience report, we will describe the workshop design and share the perspectives of the participating K-5 teachers. One particular area of focus of the workshop was integrating 'plugged' or technology-based computing examples for the teachers. Further, we engaged the teachers with a discussion of the role of CT in promoting equity for students and demonstrated ways in which student cultural experiences could be activated through creative computing. Specific outcomes of the work included increased confidence and value in CT vocabulary usage, ideas to infuse existing curriculum with CT ideas, and teacher belief that CT could be used as a "gateway" for learning CS. We make recommendations for future efforts to include CT in pre-service teacher preparation.

Prior research has shown that a sense of belonging is very important for students to continue in their field of study. This is particularly true for minoritized students in introductory CS courses. The methods used so far to study sense of belonging in CS have been qualitative or have used a small number of survey items. In this paper, we validate a large 30-item survey originally developed for Mathematics. We collected data from 21 institutions, with 30 faculty and 1165 survey responses. We present a factor analysis for the survey to highlight how it measures factors like 'Membership', 'Acceptance', 'Affect', 'Trust' and 'Desire to Fade'. We measured the students' sense of belonging using the survey and found that it correlates with their learning and their interest to pursue more CS courses. These correlations were nuanced based on students' gender, race, and the type of learning environment. We found that for minoritized students in particular, the interest to pursue CS courses was more correlated with their sense of belonging. A type of learning environment we examined was Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). We studied the differences in sense of belonging between POGIL and non-POGIL classrooms. Although we did not find a significant difference in overall sense of belonging at the factor level, we did find significant differences when we examined at the item level. These results shed light about nuances in students' sense of belonging in CS POGIL classrooms when compared to other approaches.

Collaborative learning actively engages students in the learning process while developing professional skills that employers seek. Approaches such as Pair Programming and Peer Instruction have been shown to improve student outcomes in computer science. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) is another col- laborative learning approach that aims to develop students' mastery of discipline-specific concepts as well as 'process skills' like com- munication, teamwork, and critical thinking. This paper examines students' perceptions of their content learning and process skills in courses that recently switched to POGIL. We explore the re- lationship between those perceptions, self-efficacy, and learning performance. Our results show that students have positive views about their teamwork, developing skills to work with others, and thinking through a problem. However, self-efficacy is the only sig- nificant predictor of their learning. We discuss the implications of these results for using POGIL and other collaborative learning in CS courses, and identify directions for future work.

Computing education needs to become more inclusive and equitable. K-12 educators play an important role in broadening partici- pation in computing. This document summarizes my plans for a study that will help us understand educator classroom experiences, challenges, and constraints with implementing equitable computing pedagogy, and explore how compting education researchers can best design support mechanisms for K-12 educators in making school experiences in computing equitable and inclusive.

The representation of women in computer science (CS) is low in the United States and has been declining over the past few decades. Prior research has demonstrated that educators play an important role in increasing gender diversity. Not much, however, is known about their views regarding gender diversity in CS. Educators are often isolated as the only ones teaching CS in their schools, with limited opportunity to converse with each other about the underrepresentation of women in CS and other issues facing the field. Thus, to better understand educators rq questions and concerns about gender diversity, we conducted a qualitative exploratory study within an online discussion forum, Stack Exchange for CS educators. The conversations gave us insights into gender diversity issues that the forum members were interested in, such as enrollment, retention, and roles of teachers. We also analyzed the lenses through which the forum members spoke about gender representation. Results from this study suggest that researchers need to continue to examine educator perceptions so that we can design appropriate online teacher communities, teacher education courses, and professional development workshops to address equity and gender diversity issues in CS.