Beyond computing careers: Expanding measures of persistence and success
By Melissa (Mez) Perez & Patricia Garcia
In April 2023, our article “Tracing Participation Beyond Computing Careers: How Women Reflect on Their Experiences in Computing Programs” was published in ACM Transactions on Computing Education Journal (TOCE). Our work gave us the opportunity to have conversations with the broader CS community, prompting some reflections on the concept of persistence, which we summarize in this blog article.
Persistence as a metric is useful for understanding trends in how learners achieve their academic goals and advance through pre-determined computing pathways despite obstacles and setbacks. The concept may be operationalized differently across studies, but the core of the concept remains the same: minoritized individuals “persist” when they overcome obstacles, successfully obtain a computing degree, and move on to computing careers.
With this framing, those who do not end up earning a computing degree are categorized as “non-persistors,” and their experiences are typically sidelined. Yet, we need to have these experiences front and center to examine how “persistence” is experienced by minoritized learners as they navigate computing pathways. We know that to earn computing degrees, women, gender non-conforming, disabled, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other minoritized groups must “persist” in academic institutions that have historically and systemically excluded members of their communities. To “persist,” they are encouraged to conform to longstanding norms and values in computing or risk social alienation. In short, they must persist in systems that are unwilling to change.
What if we looked beyond computing degrees and broadened what counts as persistence? How would that change what “participation in computing” looks like? In our work, we studied the experiences of those who chose not to “persist” in computing. Yet, we do not categorize participants into persistors and non-persistors. Instead, we surfaced experiences across a range of forms of participation in computing, which are not easily captured by matriculation statistics. We did this through reflective, photo-elicitation-based interviews to highlight how participants made sense of their own participation and relationship to computing. We centered the experiences of people who participated in BPC programs regardless of whether they went on to the “next step” of earning a computing degree because we wanted to create space for narratives of success that were not so narrowly defined by degree outcomes.
Participants shared rich personal stories of success and credited their participation in BPC programs for positive outcomes in their lives, such as forming strong social ties, learning leadership skills, and gaining new hobbies. Importantly, these positive outcomes were not divorced from computing. Our study found that computing was an integral component of the positive outcomes – forming social ties by learning to code with peers, volunteering to lead computing-related responsibilities at work, and expressing oneself through multimedia hobbies that require computing skills. To highlight an example, we present a condensed narrative shared by a participant in this study, Angelica (pseudonym).
Angelica’s Reflections
Angelica was a junior at the time of the interview, in the middle of switching from a computer science major to a business degree. In high school, she participated in a summer BPC program that emphasized learning computing skills alongside other girls and included mentorship from women in computing careers. Using the photo-elicitation method, Angelica discussed the images she brought to the interview and connected her images to her broader perceptions of computing.
For example, many of the images she brought are of tech devices and apps that allow for social connections. As we expanded on her perceptions in our conversation, she shared how her own experiences in the program were heavily influenced by the potential for connections to other people. For her, making friends was as much a part of the program as learning how to code.
She shared that, even during the school year, she was drawn to computing contexts because she viewed them as places where she could meet up with friends and even develop new connections.
When she reflected on why she initially pursued computer science as a major, she mentioned that “you can never be in trouble with [a computer science major]. There’s always going to be job opportunities.” Even so, Angelica felt conflicted about viewing computing as a career pathway because her role models in the BPC program, who were women in computing careers, described hostile and socially isolated work environments. Given her social inclinations, Angelica shared that she did not resonate with her experiences as a CS major. She specifically identified that her CS courses did not show how she would have the opportunity to interact with other people as part of a possible computing career.
Ultimately, she rejected a traditional career in computing because of this limited opportunity to interact with others. However, the relationships she built through her participation in computing stayed with her and were instrumental in her transition to college life. She credited her experience as a CS major with the opportunity to “be able to study together and just make those connections that I definitely wouldn’t have had otherwise.” Although she decided to change majors, she describes still valuing the opportunity to make friends and try out computing: “Deep down, I always kind of knew it really wasn’t the thing for me, but I also just wanted to try it out. Because that’s kind of badass.”
Learning from Angelica’s Reflections
According to narrow definitions of success in computing, Angelica did not “persist” because she changed majors. To be clear, we are not arguing for the abandonment of efforts to improve the persistence of minoritized learners in computing. However, if we broaden our measure of success beyond persistence in a computing degree, what can we take away from Angelica’s story? For one, if we place value on the diverse experiences people have in these programs, we can capture a fuller picture of the impact of BPC programs. We could capture the diverse downstream successes that our participants valued and could recall years after their participation. Further, we could examine the values and norms embedded within computing learning environments and workplaces. Not accounting for the CS “non-persisters” results in ignoring the aspects of CS learning environments that turned them away. We instead need to look at the systemic issues facing minoritized people in computing and look beyond computing careers to frame the desired outcomes of computing education programs. Perhaps most importantly, ignoring the CS “non-persisters” means ignoring the aspects of computing learning environments that had a lasting impact. These experiences, therefore, should not be treated as failures but embraced as assets that could be used to truly broaden participation in computing.