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Underrepresented High Schoolers’ Interests, Engagement, and Experiences in an Information and Communications Technology Summer Workshop: A Three-Year Study

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Abstract

In this paper we describe our investigation of underrepresented high school students’ interests, engagement, and experiences in design-based Information and Communications Technology (ICT) summer workshop activities; with the goal of identifying activities, aspects, and/or elements of the program that can be tailored or improved upon to attract, engage, educate, and retain high schoolers who have historically been underrepresented in ICT. Our primary research question is “which activities are most engaging for students typically underrepresented in ICT careers and programs,” and we additionally report on underrepresented students’ experiences and psychosocial changes across the summer workshops. A total of 139 high school students (of which 98 identified as being underrepresented female and/or racially minoritized students) participated in the ICT workshops hosted across three consecutive summers at a large, public, urban university in the Midwestern region of the United States. Employing a mixed methods design, our quantitative results and qualitative findings suggest that underrepresented students in our sample found the summer workshops’ group projects and hands-on courses to be the most engaging activities. Implications of our results/findings are further discussed.

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Acknowledgements

With the support of the NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) Program through Grant #1433769 for the project “Design-Based Information Technologies Learning Experiences (DITLE),” the authors would like to thank evaluator Frederica Frost who was supportive and thorough in her analyses and feedback; instructors Jen Fritz and Tom Wulf who contributed their time and efforts in teaching during the Summer Workshops; as well as Dr. Ashley Vaughn and Lauren Kirgis who aided in data organization and collection. For more on the DITLE program, please visit http://cech.uc.edu/it/ditle-grant.html

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Cincinnati, 2610 McMicken Circle, Cincinnati, OH, 45221-0105, USA

    Marcus Lee Johnson, Scott Gibbons & Helen Meyer

  2. School of Information Technology, University of Cincinnati, 2610 McMicken Circle, Cincinnati, OH, 45221-0105, USA

    Hazem Said, Chengcheng Li & Rebekah Michael

  3. Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Cincinnati, 2815 Commons Way, Cincinnati, OH, 45221-0025, USA

    Sarai Hedges

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  1. Marcus Lee Johnson
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Correspondence to Marcus Lee Johnson.

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Drs. Marcus Johnson, Hazem Said, Helen Meyer, and Chengcheng Li, along with co-authors Sarai Hedges and Scott Gibbons declare that we have no conflicts of interest.

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Johnson, M.L., Said, H., Hedges, S. et al. Underrepresented High Schoolers’ Interests, Engagement, and Experiences in an Information and Communications Technology Summer Workshop: A Three-Year Study. Urban Rev 54, 41–66 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-021-00603-4

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