Exploring differences in minority students’ attitudes towards computing after a one-day coding workshop

Abstract

As programming continues to be an essential 21st century skill, it is critical to focus on diversity and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in computing. To address this need, we must better understand minorities’ views and attitudes towards programming, especially in their youth, as literature shows that children form ideas about their interests and careers in middle school or earlier. To explore this, we provided middle school students in the U.S. with a full day (7 hours) of programming activities to learn about their initial attitudes towards computing and how a short intervention might change these attitudes. We ran two separate one-day events, serving a total of 34 minority students (21 males and 13 females; grades 6 and 7) from a low-income, urban area. We found that students’ initial attitudes towards computing were high, and that one day of learning programming increased their reported attitudes in computing even more. We also found differences in attitudes by gender and ethnicity. These findings highlight the positive attitudes minority students have towards computing, and the importance of providing resources and support to help maintain their interests in computing while recognizing demographic differences.