Efforts to bring incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals into the field of computing stands to improve equitable access to both computing jobs, and consequently the benefits of our tools and innovations through the inclusion of more diverse perspectives. This report describes the design and execution of a college level introductory computing course conducted with 26 students currently incarcerated at a prison in the United States in Fall 2022. We discuss the ways that the prison environment and the student body differ from traditional college computing classes, and how this impacted the design and execution of the course. We found that despite significant environmental barriers to learning to program, such as not having access to a code interpreter, there were unique affordances of the student population, including maturity and community, that could be leveraged in the course design and policies. We conclude with many lessons learned for the purpose of improving future offerings of computing courses in prisons.
Fri 22 MarDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
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15:45 25mTalk | Challenges and Approaches to Teaching CS1 in Prison Papers Emma Hogan University of California, San Diego, Ruoxuan Li Columbia University, Adalbert Gerald Soosai Raj University of California, San Diego, William Griswold UC San Diego, Leo Porter University of California San Diego DOI | ||
16:10 25mTalk | Community Action Computing: A Data-centric CS0 Course Papers Ayaan M. Kazerouni California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Jane Lehr California Polytechnic State University, Zoƫ Wood California Polytechnic State University DOI | ||
16:35 25mTalk | Socially Responsible Computing in an Introductory Course Papers Aakash Gautam University of Pittsburgh, Anagha Kulkarni San Francisco State University, Sarah Hug Colorado Evaluation & Research Consulting, Jane Lehr California Polytechnic State University, Ilmi Yoon San Francisco State University DOI |