BPC-DP: Improving Computing Education for Incarcerated College Students

The University of California, San Diego will deploy and assess innovations in computer science education in prison settings. Mass incarceration disproportionately impacts people of lower socioeconomic status. Participating in education during incarceration, and especially higher education, is the most effective way known to reduce one’s chances of returning to prison once released. Higher education programs in prisons are currently broadly lacking in STEM offerings, and momentum is growing to increase diverse opportunities as access to higher education is set to increase due to recent change in legislation. Applying computer science education research in prison settings will contribute new knowledge to the field pertaining to a unique population including addressing gaps in academic preparation, the needs of adult learners, and challenges faced by students with learning disabilities. In addition, the team will study how to effectively teach computing in a setting with significant environmental barriers, such as limited access to the internet and online resources. Expanding and improving computer science education in prisons will also serve the field of computing by expanding our student population and workforce. This Demonstration Project will expand participation in computing amongst incarcerated individuals. Specifically, this project seeks to discover and invent best practices for teaching computing at the college-level in prisons. The research will be informed through the research team's own instructional interventions and weekly self-reflections from the incarcerated students in their classes. Through teaching introductory programming courses in a prison setting, this research will answer the following research questions: 1) what are the challenges of executing college-level computing courses in a correctional setting; 2) what are the unique challenges faced by incarcerated students; and 3) how can the lessons learned from teaching in this environment improve computing education in general? This new knowledge will help prepare computing educators across the country to participate in the expansion of higher education programs in prisons, and best serve the incarcerated students they teach. In addition, this work will bring attention in the computing education research community to the unique academic strengths and needs of the incarcerated student population, and the profound positive impact that computing education in prisons can have on incarcerated individuals and society. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.