Evaluating a Linked-courses Learning Community for Development Majors

Abstract

Despite a rebound in enrollments, men of color and women remain underrepresented in computing. The literature indicates that student-student interaction and affinity for the computing major are important factors for retention of underrepresented groups in computing, and learning communities connect students with each other and faculty to improve collaboration, interaction, enthusiasm. Despite their long history and promise for addressing retention, computing-focused learning communities remain rare. Here we present an evaluation of a linked-courses learning community for men of color and women majoring in a development-focused area of computing. We measure student attitudes and affinity for their major via a survey developed by the authors. Our results show that learning community students felt significantly more supported and were more likely to report that they belonged to a community of programmers than other students enrolled in the same programming class.