Motivation. Asking for help is an essential skill in computing. However, many students face barriers to help-seeking, such as not being aware of help-seeking resources, doubting the usefulness of resources, fearing judgment from their peers, or not wanting to rely on others for help. Prior work on help-seeking in computing contexts has not directly considered how to include student perspectives in the design of help-seeking structures. Moreover, marginalized students face additional challenges due to inequities they face in computing. Therefore, it is imperative to elicit the voices of students marginalized in the community to address all challenges students face.

Background: Prior research argues that positive learning environments support student learning, belonging, and the desire to continue learning. In order to create joyful learning environments, we must first study what characterizes such learning spaces. However, prior research has not yet asked students what makes CS learning environments joyful. Objective: In this study, we sought to understand students’ joyful experiences in secondary CS classrooms and the elements of the learning environments that fostered those experiences. Method: We interviewed 8 students who had joyful CS experiences about those experiences, the environments in which they occured, and about the pedagogies their teachers used. We then interviewed 5 of their teachers to better understand the environments and pedagogies that cultivated joyful CS experiences. Findings: We found 4 elements in common in each student’s experience: teachers worked to relate to students, prioritize a relationship with learning, frame CS with purpose, and reify a joyful CS experience. Implications: These findings offer the opportunity for researchers and educators to reconsider pedagogies and design learning environments that engender joyful CS experiences for students. This will better enable students to build relationships with CS.

Background and Context. An ongoing thread in computing education research is how to increase women's participation in computing. One potential way is to improve their sense of belonging, as prior research has found that individuals' sense of belonging is related to their persistence in computing. Research from other STEM fields has shown that students benefit from sharing a gender identity with their professor. However, there is limited work on how a teaching assistant's (TA) identity relates to students' outcomes, especially in computing contexts.

Although hybrid courses have become increasingly common in higher education, it remains uncertain whether a student's experience of a course is consistent between in-person and online modalities. To investigate this, we analyzed student modality and discussion data from the Spring 2023 offering of an elective data science course where students are allowed to attend each lecture in person or synchronously online.