Sonia Fereidooni

Project

Designing a Justice-Based Intermediate Computing Curriculum

This project focuses on how students of different visible and invisible identities (especially underrepresented identities, i.e. female students; Black students; students with disabilities) respond to a justice-centered approach to computing by engaging ethics, identity, and political vision in the computing course. We are implementing our design in CSE 373.

What I learned

I have learned how to conduct a formal and eligible survey among a student body at the University of Washington. Usually, there are many legal requirements and permissions that are needed, as well as a formal and ethical way to conduct the study and collect survey responses from collegiate students. Learning how to perform a research study in an ethical and legal manner was an intricate process that I found to be very important for pursuing future research studies among collegiate students. I also learned much of how to work with qualitative data in response-based research. Student experience is a very important metric and cannot be converted to a quantifiable metric, as it takes away from the importance and weight of their words. Being able to code qualitative responses into fact-based data used for research is an important skill that I was able to hone throughout this project.

Advice for future applicants

Keep exploring, keep asking questions, and keep obsessing over the different paths your research takes you!

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