Collaborative Research: BPC-DP: Improving Minority Student Participation in the Computing Career Pipeline with Culturally Situated Design Tools

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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute proposes a project to extend the use of Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs) to engage underrepresented minorities in computing. CSDTs are web-based applets are based on ethnomathematics: the mathematical knowledge embedded in cultural designs such as cornrow hairstyles, Native American beadwork, and Latino percussion rhythms. They allow students to use these underlying mathematical principles to simulate the original cultural designs, create new designs of their own invention, and engage in specific math inquiries. They have been used in K-12 schools with large numbers of African-American, Latino, and Native American students, and preliminary evaluations indicate statistically significant increase in both math achievement and attitudes toward technology-based careers. This proposed work is two-fold. First, it will develop a new user interface for CSDTs in which students create designs by entering pseudocode, thus shifting the learning content emphasis from mathematics to computer programming. Second, it will utilize the CSDTs in the Student Leadership Corps (SLC) of the BPC-sponsored STARS alliance, allowing undergraduate SLC members to provide new training and resources to students with outreach projects in grade 7-12 and out-of-school education. SLC students will also have the opportunity to develop CSDTs of their own creation, following a design protocol that ensures respectful use of cultural materials by a participatory process involving local members of educational and cultural communities. The project evaluation will examine the impact of CSDTs on both SLC students and their outreach constituency.