Exploring Computing Students' Sense of Belonging Before and After a Collaborative Learning Course

Prior work has found that women tend to report lower sense of belonging compared to men in STEM and computing contexts, which may discourage women's persistence. Collaborative learning has been shown to improve students' sense of belonging in some STEM and computing courses relative to traditional lecturing; however, these studies tend to focus on a single course or the first implementation of such pedagogical changes. Our study explores whether these trends generalize by measuring students' sense of belonging across three non-introductory computing courses that have consistently used collaborative learning activities over three semesters. We ask the following research question: Is collaborative learning generally associated with an increased sense of belonging, especially for women? We found that while there were variations across courses, students' reported sense of belonging improved in all courses. Notably, women's reported sense of belonging improved 15% whereas men's reported sense of belonging improved by 11%. Our findings complement prior studies by providing evidence of a relationship between increased sense of belonging and collaborative learning, and suggest students' sense of belonging is malleable beyond the first year. These findings challenge critiques of past studies as being isolated to single courses or conducted only immediately after an effort to change a course, suggesting pedagogical changes may hold promise in improving students' affective outcomes.