#ethicalCS: Equity and Access

This is part of a series of documents meant support a discussion and investigation of ethics and morals in relation to the impact of computer science on the world at-large. You can find the rest of series here:

• #ethicalCS
• Abstraction
• Algorithm
• Programming
• Data
• Networks
• Design, UX/UI (coming)
• Bias (coming)
• Teaching (coming)
• Learning Goals (coming)
• Algorithmic Discrimination (coming)

Introduction: In this document we will engage with the ethics of equity and access in Computer Science education. Here is a helpful explanation equity and access in the context of math education:

Creating, supporting, and sustaining a culture of access and equity require being responsive to students’ backgrounds, experiences, cultural perspectives, traditions, and knowledge when designing and implementing a mathematics program and assessing its effectiveness. Acknowledging and addressing factors that contribute to differential outcomes among groups of students are critical to ensuring that all students routinely have opportunities to experience high-quality mathematics instruction, learn challenging mathematics content, and receive the support necessary to be successful. Addressing equity and access includes both ensuring that all students attain mathematics proficiency and increasing the numbers of students from all racial, ethnic, linguistic, gender, and socioeconomic groups who attain the highest levels of mathematics achievement. (National Council of Teaching Mathematics).

This document is generated from the #ethicalCS Twitter chat. You can find the highlights from the chat on equity and access here with Dan Shiffman, Saron Yitbarek and others.

Questions:

1. How do we remove barriers so other can contribute, especially to open source projects?
2. How do we see the ethics and morals of tools, practices and platforms?
3. How do we provide meaningful education to a diverse student body?

Ideas:

1. Show your mistakes so that beginner can feel welcome to take risks.
2. Build tools that increase accessibility by making it easier to understand code.
3. Provide high-quality and easily accessible learning materials on varied platforms.
4. Representation matter so show a variety of identities, experiences, and outcomes.
5. Make yourself accessible to others by going to events, meetup, and helping out.
6. Highlight creativity, ethics, and identity to create more inclusive classroom projects.
7. Focus of solving problems that matter instead of just vocational training.
8. Diversify how we teach, who teaches, and where we teach.

Resources:

• CodeNewbie podcast on the ethics of coding by Saron Yitbarek
• Base.cs by Vaidehi Joshi and Saron Yitbarek
• Coding Train by Dan Shiffman
• Accessible p5 IDE by Mathura Govindaraja with Cassie Tarakajian and Claire Kearney-Volpe
• Coding in the Wild by Jeremy Keeshin
• Making art with Raspberry Pi by Stephanie Nemeth
• Computer Science is not the Answer by Shawn Van Every