This Birds of a Feather session invites Black computing educators, students, and allies to contribute towards cultivating a sustainable support system for Black students and faculty in computing. Participants will share lived experiences, strategies, and challenges in navigating academic and professional spaces, especially with the current decisive, contentious political climate and its implications for the Black computer science education community. Grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory, this session will focus on the three main tenets of this theory: self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations and personal goals through the presented activities. One example is the celebration of the achievements, both academic and non-academic, of all attendees. This contributes to all tenets: it addresses their self-efficacy beliefs and confidence in their ability to perform; it presents actual results addressing their outcome expectations and helps shape their goals as they see 'like' individuals achieving. The authors will foster collaborative, brainstorming, affirmative, reflective and collective exchange.

Race and gender are crucial concepts in the computer science (CS) education research community's broadening participation efforts and scholarship. They help to critique the ways that white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and patriarchy structure and discipline CS classrooms and workplaces. In addition, attention to race and gender has helped to reimagine and redesign CS education to be more culturally responsive and sustaining for marginalized students. This panel builds on these foundational efforts by starting a conversation about what a more intentional focus on the concept of class and its connections to political economy can offer researchers and educators who are committed to more race and gender inclusivity, diversity, and equity in CS education across primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. What might the concept introduce into intersectional analyses of the exclusionary structures of the education-to-workforce CS ''pipeline''? How might class be defined to help redesign CS education to affirm the identities of racially marginalized students from working class communities? How might the language of class provide new insights into the ways that racism, sexism, and ableism shape CS education? What might the operationalization of the concept help to reveal about the economic interests that underpin mainstream CS curricula and education policies? And how might class help CS professionals and educators understand their own social positions? Through a discussion with researchers and practitioners from different disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical orientations, this panel seeks to provide a foundation for more intentional and rigorous engagements with the concept of class within the CS education research community.

Recent scholarship reveals that Black women who live at the intersection of race and gender are having a very different experience in computing education. For example, Black women testify to incidents of gendered racism in K-16 education, and in some cases, choose to leave the field of computing altogether. Additionally, the use of Eurocentric methodologies and tools that position intersectional populations as objects of study rather than agents of knowledge reinforces power differentials that continue to marginalize intersectional populations in the field of computing. In contrast, we advocate for developing appropriate intersectional methods that center intersectional populations in computing education research. As proof of concept, we apply Black feminist epistemologies or Black women's ways of knowing to center the experiences of Black women, an intersectional and underrepresented population in computing. Recognizing Black women students, faculty, and industry professionals as knowledge agents or intellectuals, we introduce the concept of sister circles - counterspaces designed to support Black women in computing as they engage in intimate conversations with each other about their experiences pursuing computing degrees and careers. Content analysis of the sister circles informs how scholars can apply this method as (1) a valid knowledge-production process and (2) an intersectional method for data collection.

One of the challenges of broadening participation in computing lies in acknowledging that white supremacy and racism have created racial disparities in the K-12 education system in the United States. For example, Black rural communities in the southeastern region of the United States often lack access to CS education compared to privileged white rural communities in the same area. However, Emmanuel, a faith-based organization situated in a rural Black community, serves as a beacon of hope, seeking to address the racial and class disparities that contribute to social inequalities that continue to marginalize K-12 Black students. Emmanuel, the manifestation of Black leadership, Black culture, and Black spirituality, provides a variety of supplemental programs to address the spiritual, social, and educational needs of its constituents. In this experience report, we leverage Black feminist thought to demonstrate how Black women of diverse backgrounds, united by their Christian beliefs and commitment to uplift the Black community, work together to create a series of CS unplugged activities. As a result of this collaboration, Emmanuel provides an informal CS learning opportunity that bridges elementary students' experiences with food to the basic computing concept of algorithms.

Research suggests that despite the growing number of Black women who intend to major in computer science, adverse experiences in hostile computing degree programs contribute to their leaving the field as an act of resistance. The Black women who choose to persist utilize various mechanisms to help them navigate hostile environments within computing. One such mechanism is social capital where Black women leverage their social connections with others in the field of computing. As a part of a larger study that explores the role that social capital plays for Black women in computing, we used the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS) to ask 14 Black women in three virtual focus groups about the social influences that impact their ability to persist in computing. Results reveal that spirituality is a large part of persistence in computing. However, SCCBS privileges certain religious denominations as part of the narrative of what constitutes acceptable religious practices in the United States. Black women criticize the SCCBS as being non-inclusive of the Black experience in the U.S. Furthermore, Black women indicate that spirituality more so than religious affiliations provides strong social connections that affirm their sense of self while providing a community of support.

Enhanced participation of Black women in CS education research is of ethical imperative, and empowering individuals who would otherwise not be able to fully engage in this community improves the quality of research and increases our national potential to solve real-world problems. We posit that the lack of participation of Black women in CS education research is not due to a lack of interest or expertise, but instead is another example of the continued marginalization of Black women that exists throughout our society. This panel of Black women scholars will share (1) their unique experiences and perspectives as Black women in the field of CS education, (2) the barriers Black women encounter in CS education research, and (3) existing and potential support mechanisms that enable Black women to more fully engage in the CS education research community.

Despite the emergence of intersectional computing and increased scholarship that utilizes the concept of intersectionality, there is a lack of consensus about the appropriation of intersectionality as a critical framework within the computing education community. Intersectionality provides a critical lens for understanding and analyzing the complexity in human experiences that are shaped by multiple social constructs (race, gender, class, etc.) in mutually influencing ways. What lies at the heart of the matter is acknowledging the humanity of intersectional populations to create safe spaces and a sense of belonging in the computing community. However, using Eurocentric research methods when working with intersectional populations tends to further marginalize them. Calling into question the validity of Eurocentric methods, we argue for alternative ways of knowing in CS education research that affirm intersectional populations. Applying critical autoethnography to our own body of computing education research, we leverage Black feminist epistemologies or Black women's ways of knowing to differentiate intersectional studies from studies of intersectional populations.

With increased focus on historically excluded populations, there have been recent calls for HCI research methods to more adequately acknowledge and address the historical context of racism, sexism, gendered racism, epistemic violence, classism, and so on. In this article, we utilize Black feminist epistemologies to serve as critical frameworks for understanding the historical context that reveals the interconnected systems of power that mutually influence one another to create unequal outcomes or social inequalities for different populations. Leveraging Black feminist thought (BFT) and intersectionality as critical social theories of design praxis, we introduce intersectional analysis of power—a method that enables HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to identify and situate saturated sites of violence in a historical context and to transform the ways in which they engage with populations that have been historically oppressed. Engaging in self-reflection as researchers, we apply an intersectional analysis of power to co-design technologies with community street outreach workers who address violence in their predominantly Black communities. We: (1) identify the saturated site of violence; (2) identify the intersecting systems of power and who holds power (past and present); (3) describe the “conceptual glue” that binds these intersecting systems together and the assumption(s) that those who hold power are employing to guide their interactions; (4) examine the ways in which Black people are subjugated, surveilled, and/or expected to assimilate to “normative” ways of being and behaving; and (5) identify acts of resistance. This article contributes an alternative to traditional HCI and design methods that falsely perpetuate a lens of neutrality and colorblindness that centers on whiteness, innovation, and capitalism and ignores the history of State-sanctioned violence and structural oppression.

With increased public scrutiny of policing and growing calls for community-based violence prevention, street outreach programs that hire residents to mediate conflicts in their neighborhoods are gaining support. To understand how street outreach workers (SOWs) use information and communication technologies (ICTs) and how they envision future ICTs that better support their work, we interviewed 25 SOWs across three organizations. Results suggest that SOWs leverage ICTs to: 1) identify and mediate conflict; 2) support collaboration and teamwork; and 3) invoke community connections and trust. SOWs posit that new ICTs could provide a seamless infrastructure for communication among SOWs and between community members, assist with training to sharpen conflict negotiation skills, and provide insight on effective conflict mediation strategies.

Traditional approaches to technology design have historically ignored Blackness in both who engages and conceptualizes future technologies. Design contributions of groups marginalized along race and class are often othered, and rarely considered the design standard. While frameworks have emerged to encourage attention to gender and social justice in design, little work has acknowledged evidence of the Black imaginary in this process. The current canon of design defines futuring and speculation as stemming from a narrow view of science fiction, one which does not include Black futurist perspectives. In this essay, we expand the canon of design by arguing that frameworks such as Afrofuturism, Afrofuturist feminism, and Black feminism be considered instrumental in design’s imagining of our future technological landscape. We contribute to the larger conversation of who gets to future in design, suggesting a dialogic relationship between those who conceptualize design and those who consider design’s societal impact.

The session will present an overview of findings of a recently funded NSF workshop that set out to examine the pressing issues for computing education research for the next 15 years. Based on dialogs for scholars working in this area, the workshop participants developed a series of themes and topics that they felt should become the focus of computing education research efforts for the next 15 years. Main themes that emerged and will be discussed in this session include: diversity, equity, inclusion, ethics, broadening participation, teaching, learning, K-12, research to practice, computing's connection to other fields, and computing education research disciplinary issues. The session will focus on interesting research questions from each of these areas that are ripe to be explored as well as enablers and blockers to the progress of this work.

Despite numerous CS education pedagogical interventions, the pipeline of Black women in Computing has not increased, which illustrates the need to address structural issues (such as racism, sexism, power, and privilege) that impact Black women's intersectional identities. Without honest conversations about power relations within the field of Computing, one cannot expect to engender social change that equates to equity for all CS students. Leveraging intersectionality as a critical framework, we interview 18 Black women about their experiences navigating the computing education ecosystem. Intersectional analysis of Black women's experiences reveals that CS education consists of saturated sites of violence in which interconnected systems of power converge to enact oppression. Findings reveal three saturated sites of violence within CS education: 1. traditional K-12 classrooms; 2. predominantly White institutions; and 3. internships as supplementary learning experiences.

Despite the increasing number of women receiving bachelor’s degrees in computing (i.e., Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, etc.), a closer look reveals that the percentage of Black women in computing has significantly dropped in recent years, highlighting the underrepresentation of Black women and its negative impact on broadening participation in the field of computing. The literature reveals that several K-16 interventions have been designed to increase the representation of Black women and girls in computing. Despite these best efforts, the needle seems to have barely moved in increasing the representation or the retention of Black women in computing. Instead, the primary goals have been to recruit and retain women in the CS pipeline using gender-focused efforts intended to increase the number of women who also identify as members of racialized groups. However, these gender-focused efforts have fallen short of increasing the number of Black women in computing because they fail to acknowledge or appreciate how intersectionality (the overlapping social constructs of gender, race, ethnicity, class, etc.) has shaped the lived experiences of Black women navigating the computing pipeline. Without honest dialogue about how power operates in the field of computing, the push for racial equality and social justice in CS education remains an elusive goal. Leveraging intersectionality as a critical framework to address systemic oppression (i.e., racism, gender discrimination, power, and privilege), we interview 24 Black women in different phases of the computing pipeline about their experiences navigating the field of computing. An intersectional analysis of Black women’s experiences reveals that CS education consists of saturated sites of violence in which interconnected systems of power converge to enact oppression. Findings reveal three primary saturated sites of violence within CS education: (1) traditional K-12 classrooms; (2) predominantly White institutions; and (3) internships as supplementary learning experiences. We conclude the article with implications for how the field of CS education can begin to address racial inequality that negatively impacts Black girls and women, thus contributing to a more equitable and socially just field of study that benefits all students.

Speech-based interfaces that feature conversational agents have a diverse population of users, including children. While recent HCI research has investigated child-agent interactions in the context of speech-based interfaces with rare mention of sample populations' racial makeup, scant research has examined how racially minoritized groups, in particular Black youth, interact with such technologies. Subsequently, issues of race and racism continue to be largely neglected within the HCI community, contributing to technology that marginalizes Black people. Leveraging Black feminist epistemology as a critical framework, we engage Black students in the ideation process of conversational agents as speech-based interfaces, drawing attention to how race, gender, and class influence their design choices. Our findings reveal that Black students prefer custom-designed conversational agents that are modeled after Black women, possessing knowledge of Black culture and serving as life coaches to help them achieve their goals. We also confirm that the current design of speech-based interfaces perpetuates racism, reinforcing whiteness as the norm.

Video games that require players to utilize a target or second language to complete tasks have emerged as alternative pedagogical tools for Second Language Acquisition (SLA). With the exception of vocabulary acquisition, much of the prior research in game-based SLA fails to gauge students' literacy skills, specifically their morphological awareness or understanding of the smallest meaningful linguistic units (e.g., prefixes, suffixes, and roots). Given this shortcoming, we utilize a two-player online game to facilitate social interactions between Native English Speakers (NES) and English as a Second Language (ESL) students as a mechanism to generate ESL students' written output in the targeted language and draw attention to their morphological awareness. Analysis of chat logs demonstrates the game's potential to enhance ESL students' morphological awareness and other important L2 literacy skills such as word reading accuracy. Both NES and ESL students' reflections of their gameplay experiences suggest game design modifications that promote ESL students' willingness to communicate with NES while developing their morphological awareness and practicing their L2 communication and literacy skills.

Efforts to broaden participation in computing have led to gender-focused interventions intended to increase the number of women in the field of computing. However, such efforts have failed to significantly increase the percentage of Black women in computing. For example, only 1% of the 28,884 bachelor\textquotesingle s degrees in computing were awarded to Black women in 2018. Moreover, too few empirical studies have intentionally explored the lived experiences of Black women, an often overlooked and understudied population in the computing ecosystem. In this paper, we introduce intersectionality - the complex overlap of socially constructed identities such as race, gender, class, sexuality, etc. - as a theoretical framework and springboard for exploring the lived experiences of Black women in computing. We interview 14 Black women in various stages of the computing ecosystem (undergraduate students, graduate students and early career professionals) to understand how intersectionality influences their ability to persist in computing. Preliminary findings from the analysis of the 14 interviews provides insights into how the interlocking systems of oppression (i.e., gendered racism) play out in computing education and negatively impact the recruitment and retention of Black women in the field of computing.

In this paper, three Black women in HCI and CSCW share their experiences of being Black women academics enduring a global pandemic that is disportionately impacting the Black community while simultaneously experiencing the civil unrest due to racial injustice and police brutality. Using Black feminist epistemologies as a theoretical framework and auto-ethnography and testimonial authority as both methodology and epistemic resistance, the authors exercise epistemic agency to testify to their lived intersectional experiences and the various fronts on which they fight to be seen, to be heard, and to live. Additionally, they advocate for more inclusionary policies of Black women and other marginalized populations within the CSCW and HCI communities. We conclude with a call to action for both communities to: 1) stand in solidarity with Blacks in computing; and 2) acknowledge, disavow, and dismantle Whiteness and oppressive power structures in the field of computing, specifically HCI and CSCW.

Game-based second language (L2) learning represents an ideal alternative to foreign language classroom instruction. However, despite a diverse player demographic, the design of L2 games is often not informed by players representative of marginalized populations, especially women of color (i.e., Black women). Such oversight in the design process contributes to games that perpetuate gendered and racist stereotypes, and therefore, are less appealing to women of color. In response this dilemma, we utilize Black Feminist Thought (BFT) as a critical framework to engage Black women, a marginalized and understudied population within the gaming subculture, and more broadly, the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) community in game design. Twenty-five Black women take on multiple roles as game designers, foreign language instructor, and informants who represent both producers and consumers throughout the conceptualization phase of a L2 mobile game prototype. Applying BFT principles, we leverage Black women\textquotesingle s lived intersectional experiences to transform the traditional game design process into a more inclusive design experience for Black women. In the context of games that support L2 learning, our findings reveal that Black women appreciate games that: 1. provide authentic cultural experiences; 2. feature intersectional game characters that reflect real life experiences; 3. accurately portray the diversity of Black women's bodies; and 4. provide opportunities for players to customize game assets. As a disruptor to traditional game design, BFT makes salient oppressive design practices within the gaming culture that also extend to the larger CSCW community, signifying the need to embrace more inclusive design practices that benefit Black women and other marginalized populations.

Few gender-focused studies of video games explore the gameplay experiences of women of color, and those that do tend to only emphasize negative phenomena (i.e., racial or gender discrimination). In this paper, we conduct an exploratory case study attending to the motivations and gaming practices of Black college women. Questionnaire responses and focus group discussion illuminate the plurality of gameplay experiences for this specific population of Black college women. Sixty-five percent of this population enjoy the ubiquity of mobile games with casual and puzzle games being the most popular genres. However, academic responsibilities and competing recreational interests inhibit frequent gameplay. Consequently, this population of Black college women represent two types of casual gamers who report positive gameplay experiences, providing insights into creating a more inclusive gaming subculture.

Ibram X. Kendi, in his book Stamped from the Beginning, lays out the argument that structures (political, economic) drive inequitable systems, and it is our enculturation in those systems that lead to ignorance and bigotry. Our goal, in this BOF, is to discuss the dominant social, political, and curricular structures of the discipline of computing, and how we might strengthen or challenge those structures to increase access, equity, and justice within computing. To do so, we must confront the manifold ways in which the existing structures and practices of computing are exclusionary, from curricula to epistemology and the expressions of identity that typically represent what it means to be (and be recognized as) a computer scientist.

African American women who have little if any experience in computer programming prior to matriculation into college often struggle in introductory CS courses that emphasize programming from the outset. These same students feel underprepared and disadvantaged, oftentimes choosing to withdraw from such courses which contributes to the underrepresentation of African American women in CS. The challenge lies in creating equitable learning environments that bridge students' everyday experiences to fundamental CS concepts. In this experience report, we introduce the Dessert Wars Challenge, an alternative pedagogical strategy that leverages students' everyday experiences with food to forge meaningful connections to CS. We examine how African American women's participation in the Dessert Wars Challenge supports the development of their Computational Algorithmic Thinking (CAT) capabilities, the ability to design, implement, assess and adapt algorithms, and contributes to their retention in a college-level introductory CS course.

No abstract available.

Service delivery organizations oftentimes overlook opportunities to cultivate client relationships due to a lack of awareness of the totality of touchpoints, or interactions, that occur between service delivery personnel and client personnel over time. To enable service delivery organizations to strategically manage their client relationships, we introduce the first phase of the Client TouchPoint Modeling (CTM) process in which service delivery teams create a touchpoint map of their collective interactions across a client account. Participatory design sessions with service delivery personnel informed the design of a CTM TouchPoint Map prototype. Through these sessions, we also discovered a more collaborative approach to CTM, one in which service delivery team members work together to co-construct a unified account map in a way that promotes team transparency and sensemaking of the service experience.

Prior research indicates that gameplay experiences attributed to Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) foster foreign language students' ability to communicate with players in the target language. We take a closer look at the role of language socialization in MMORPGs, specifically dialogue between native and non-native speakers. We modify the Dialogue Acts Markup in Several Layers code scheme to represent in-game social interactions and apply this code scheme to players' game dialogue. We then develop ClockWerk©, an evaluation tool that visually depicts communication patterns of game dialogue attributed to MMORPGs. ClockWerk© graphically detects dominant behaviors of linguistically diverse groups of players over time. ClockWerk© enables users to temporally correlate the type of social interactions with gameplay activities, gauging their impact on second language acquisition.