Exploring the appeal of socially relevant computing: are students interested in socially relevant problems?

  • Authors:

  • Cyndi Rader;Doug Hakkarinen;Barbara M. Moskal;Keith Hellman

  • Affiliations:

  • Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA;Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA;Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA;Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Prior research indicates that today's students, especially women, are attracted to careers in which they recognize the direct benefit of the field for serving societal needs. Traditional college level computer science courses rarely illustrate the potential benefits of computer science to the broader community. This paper describes a curricula development effort designed to embed humanitarian projects into undergraduate computer science courses. The impact of this program was measured through student self-report instruments. Through this investigation, it was found that students generally preferred projects that they perceived as "fun" over the projects that were social in nature. This may, in part, be due to the fact that it was difficult to reduce socially relevant problems to a level that beginning students could easily comprehend. This made it difficult to capitalize on the appeal of socially relevant problems in the early computer science courses.