Supporting Sensemaking And Self-building In Black Women HBCU Computing Majors Through Design Based Research Extended Through Black Feminisms & Afrofuturist Speculative Design

Takeria Blunt

Supporting Sensemaking And Self-building In Black Women HBCU Computing Majors Through Design Based Research Extended Through Black Feminisms & Afrofuturist Speculative Design Recent digital divide scholarship recognizes the limitations of traditional studies on access to computers and computer literacies and make the call for practitioners and researchers to prioritize research that embodies a sociocultural focus. These works examine the "digital identity divide", relationships between computing and culture, and the design of viable learning spaces and pedagogies that center equity and social justice for marginalized students in STEM and particularly in computer science education (CSE). One such student group of concern in this sociocultural expansion is Black women STEM students, who frequently wrestle with an "outsider-within" status in all levels of academia and industry. This outsider status often renders Black women invisible, excluded, and/or tokenized in some spaces. Present literature scarcely reveals the visions that Black women CS students have of future technologies and techno-futures, which I argue contributes to issues of invisibility and ostracization in the computing field. This work aims to address these gaps by blending emerging design-based research (DBR) approaches with Black feminist epistemology and Afrofuturist speculative design to develop and test CS learning interventions that: a) support computing identity development through design and invoking the ?sociological imagination? in Black women CS students; b) center these students as producers of knowledge and technological artifacts and futures; and c) generate nuanced data about the lived experiences of Black women CS majors, particularly those learning computing at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This endeavor takes part in reimagining what CSE looks like for students.

About Takeria Blunt

Takeria (Keria) Blunt is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Digital Media program at Georgia Institute of Technology. As a graduate researcher in the Expressive Machinery Lab (EML) as well, Keria?s work explores a variety of educational technologies based in computer science education (CSE) efforts. Her research focuses on centering the voices of marginalized populations in her analysis and development of educational tools to broaden participation in the field of computing. Keria is interested in co-creating CSE learning experiences, software, and courses for computing departments at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), given their unique atmospheres, histories, and challenges. Her work prioritizes the intersectional experiences of Black women undergraduate students across a variety of computing majors. When Keria isn?t conducting her research, she serves as a visual arts apprentice for the Journal of Equity & Excellence in Education (EEE).