[Paper Review] Educating Educators to Integrate Inclusive Design Across a 4-Year CS Degree Program

Lara Letaw, Rosalinda Garcia+7 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Sep 6, 2022

Gender and Technology in Education4 citations

TL;DR

This paper presents an 'educate-the-educators' curriculum to help CS faculty integrate inclusive design—specifically through the GenderMag method—into a 4-year computer science degree with minimal disruption. Of 18 faculty trained, 83% modified their courses, and 91% of those teaching in Fall 2021 reported inclusive design integration as successful or better than expected, demonstrating scalable, faculty-driven adoption across all four years of a CS curriculum.

ABSTRACT

How can an entire CS faculty, who together have been teaching the ACM standard CS curricula, shift to teaching elements of inclusive design across a 4-year undergraduate CS program? And will they even want to try? To investigate these questions, we developed an educate-the-educators curriculum to support this shift. The overall goal of the educate-the-educators curriculum was to enable CS faculty to creatively engage with embedding inclusive design into their courses in "minimally invasive" ways. GenderMag, an inclusive design evaluation method, was selected for use. The curriculum targeted the following learning outcomes: to enable CS faculty: (1) to analyze the costs and benefits of integrating inclusive design into their own course(s); (2) to evaluate software using the GenderMag method, and recognize its use to identify meaningful issues in software; (3) to integrate inclusive design into existing course materials with provided resources and collaboration; and (4) to prepare to engage and guide students on learning GenderMag concepts. We conducted a field study over a spring/summer followed by end-of-fall interviews, during which we worked with 18 faculty members to integrate inclusive design into 13 courses. Ten of these faculty then taught 7 of these courses that were on the Fall 2021 schedule, across 16 sections. We present the new educate-the-educators curriculum and report on the faculty's experiences acting upon it over the three-month field study and subsequent interviews. Our results showed that, of the 18 faculty we worked with, 83% chose to modify their courses; by Fall 2021, faculty across all four years of a CS degree program had begun teaching inclusive design concepts. When we followed up with the 10 Fall 2021 faculty, 91% of their reported outcomes indicated that the incorporations of inclusive design concepts in their courses went as well as or better than expected.

Motivation & Objective

• To address the challenge of integrating inclusive design into a standard 4-year CS curriculum without overhauling existing courses.
• To develop a scalable, minimally invasive training program for CS faculty to adopt inclusive design practices.
• To investigate faculty willingness and capacity to integrate inclusive design concepts into their existing courses.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of using the GenderMag method as a tool for identifying and addressing software inequities in academic settings.
• To support long-term, sustainable integration of inclusive design across all years of an undergraduate CS program.

Proposed method

• Developed a faculty-focused curriculum centered on the GenderMag method, an inclusive design evaluation technique that identifies gender-based usability issues in software.
• Trained 18 CS faculty members over a 3-month field study, providing resources, collaborative support, and guided practice in applying GenderMag to their own courses.
• Designed modular, low-invasion teaching materials that allowed faculty to integrate inclusive design concepts into existing course content without major rework.
• Conducted end-of-fall interviews with 10 faculty who taught courses in Fall 2021 to assess implementation outcomes and faculty experiences.
• Used qualitative and quantitative feedback to assess course modifications, perceived benefits, and challenges in adopting inclusive design.
• Focused on enabling faculty to guide students in learning and applying GenderMag concepts through scaffolded, practical exercises.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can CS faculty be effectively trained to integrate inclusive design into their existing courses with minimal disruption?
• RQ2 What are the perceived costs and benefits of integrating inclusive design from the faculty’s perspective?
• RQ3 To what extent do faculty successfully implement inclusive design concepts in their courses using the GenderMag method?
• RQ4 How do faculty experiences and outcomes vary across different year levels of a 4-year CS curriculum?
• RQ5 What factors contribute to or hinder the sustained adoption of inclusive design in CS education?

Key findings

• 83% of the 18 trained faculty members chose to modify their courses to include inclusive design concepts, demonstrating strong engagement and buy-in.
• By Fall 2021, inclusive design concepts were integrated into courses across all four years of the CS degree program, indicating successful cross-year scalability.
• 91% of the 10 faculty who taught in Fall 2021 reported that the integration of inclusive design went as well as or better than expected.
• Faculty reported that the GenderMag method provided a structured, actionable framework for identifying usability issues related to gender and other identities in software.
• The curriculum’s focus on minimal invasiveness and collaboration helped reduce resistance and supported sustainable adoption across diverse course types and levels.
• Collaborative development and access to ready-made resources were key enablers for successful integration, especially for faculty new to inclusive design.