SICSA Education Seminar: Building student community in computing: how partnership with students can support engagement

This event has passed but you can view the recording on YouTube.

For our June Education Seminar, Dr Fiona McNeill, Reader of Computing Education in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, will hold a panel discussion with undergraduate students in Informatics. 

Fiona's research focusses primarily on access to computing and STEM education for marginalised groups. Vincent Danys, Agam Cohen, Elisa Fraticelli, Lewis Simpson and Anastasia Trainor are undergraduate students in Informatics. Vincent is the outgoing president of CompSoc, the main computing society in Edinburgh, Anastasia is the lead of our Informatics Academic Families scheme, and Agam, Elisa and Lewis are members of the CompSoc community. All have been involved in the roll out of the scheme and the research we have been doing around it’s effectiveness.

Building community and sense of belonging in computing departments is notoriously challenging - with early-year classes that are often very large, students who often complete much of the work online, and significant differences in prior experience with the subject. Recognising these challenges, CompSoc - the main student society in Informatics - created a plan to introduce an Academic Family scheme into the school, where incoming students are put in families of 8-10, with 2-3 returning students acting as parents. The school partnered with CompSoc in the roll out, providing logistical support, guidance and resources. 

In this talk, key students involved in the roll out, together with the Director of Students for the school, discuss our experiences in the first year and the lessons we have learned. We will discuss the research we have done with students in three categories: academic children, academic parents, and students who chose not to participate in the scheme, and present the key findings of this research, in terms of the value students see in such a scheme, the barriers to engagement and the ways in which they want us to take the scheme forward.