"Regular" CS × Inclusive Design = Smarter Students and Greater Diversity

The CS/IT Distinguished Lecture Series is pleased to welcome Dr. Margaret Burnett, a Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University.

Details

• Friday, Oct. 23
• 11:25 am to 12:25 pm
• 136 King Hall

Abstract

What if "regular" Computer Science (CS) faculty each taught elements of inclusive design in "regular" CS courses across an undergraduate curriculum? Would it affect the CS program's education climate and inclusiveness to diverse students? Would it improve retention? Would students learn less CS? Would they actually learn any inclusive design? This talk describes the outcomes of 613 students who experienced the course offerings of the 13 CS faculty who tried this approach. The results exceeded our wildest hopes! Among them were significant improvements in student retention, their grades, their ratings of their faculty, and their ratings of the education climate’s inclusiveness. Further, the students later acted on what they learned – the software products they created were judged by inclusive design experts (who were blind to the before vs. after condition) to be more inclusive than the software products of the students who had come before. The talk also takes a peek at future directions. This talk is part of my "change the world for the better" agenda. Perhaps after this talk, some in the audience will want to join me in this effort.

Bio

Margaret Burnett is a Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University. She began her career in industry, where she was the first woman software developer ever hired at Procter & Gamble Ivorydale. A few degrees and start-ups later, she joined academia, with a research focus on people who are engaged in some form of software development. She was the principal architect of the Forms/3 and FAR visual programming languages, and co-founded the area of end-user software engineering, which aims to improve software for computer users that are not trained in programming. She leads the team that created GenderMag and SocioeconomicMag, two software inspection methods that uncover gender-inclusiveness and socioeconomic-inclusiveness issues in software from spreadsheets to programming environments. Burnett is an ACM Fellow, a member of the ACM CHI Academy, a member of the ACM SIGCHI Software Engineering Academy, and an award-winning mentor.

Last modified: 2026-10-21 14:41 by Michael Stewart (646fade)