Emma Hogan Benser

Efforts to bring incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals into the field of computing stand to improve equitable access to both computing jobs, and consequently the benefits of our tools and innovations through the inclusion of more diverse perspec- tives. 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.

Little is known in computing education research about teaching CS in adult prison contexts, or how to help adult incarcerated college students succeed in computing. Thus, my doctoral work has sought to establish a foundational understanding of best practices for computing higher education to broaden participation in computing amongst incarcerated and formerly incarcerated adults. This work draws on existing theories and frameworks from CS education and other fields, including design experiment methodology, critical andragogy, culturally relevant education, and computing in context. Findings are based on teaching 72 incarcerated college students across three iterations of introductory CS in a local college-in-prison program. This includes results of 1) using a design experiment methodology in offering CS1 in an adult prison, documenting various barriers and adapted strategies for mitigating them; 2) a qualitative analysis of 78 open-ended programming assignment submissions identifying 24 potential meaningful computing contexts for incarcerated adult students; 3) a phenomenographic study of fears of incarcerated adult students entering a CS1 course, changes in confidence throughout the course, and how fears and confidence compare between CS1 students in prison vs. on main campus; 4) a mixed methods study of students’ attitudes toward computing before and after a CS1 course, measuring the impacts of students gaining access to a code interpreter in the final iteration of the course. This is followed by a discussion of next steps in this work, including how these results can inform policy changes to help make computer science degrees in prison a reality.

Understanding incarcerated adult (IA) students’ fears upon entering a CS1 course and how their confidence changes throughout the course can help us understand how well IA students’ fears are being addressed, and help future instructors of CS1 in prison address them better. Building on recent work on non-CS majors’ fears and confidence in introductory CS, we surveyed 45 IA students across two offerings of a CS1 course in prison on their fears going into the course, and confidence in their ability to succeed. We present a phenomenographic analysis of fears amongst IA students in CS1, and analyze relationships between these fears and change in confidence. In addition, we compare the fears expressed by IA students to those of non-CS majors from prior work. Findings include many IA students reporting no fears, but an overall decrease in confidence across both offerings of the course which was mostly accounted for by students who did express initial fears. We found 9 fears overlapping with those found in a prior study outside of the prison context (e.g., getting a bad grade), and 7 fears only identified in our study (e.g., interference from circumstances beyond my control).

Supplemental resources have particular importance in prison learning contexts, as incarcerated students have less access to course staff and limited ability to seek additional resources themselves (e.g., restricted internet access). In this paper, we examine how students valued paper-based (e.g., textbook) and technology-based (e.g., Canvas discussion board) resources in two iterations of a CS1 course taught in prison. Students in the first iteration did not have access to a code interpreter, while students in the second iteration did. Findings include how students across these two CS1 offerings valued different resources, compared across students’ age and comfort with technology.