Using Black Music as a bridge to understanding introductory programming concepts

Computer Science is a field that still has long strides to make before its workforce reflects the racial, ethnic and gender diversity found in the United States. To address this problem the authors developed culturally relevant class activities and homework problems that teach students to use loops, lists, functions and conditional logic, by remixing popular Black music in an introductory Python course. The activities were developed with the thought that students would be less intimidated by the content, if they saw their culture reflected in the course materials. Using an online survey, students were asked to compare their experience working on the problems that used Black music as a context, with their experience completing textbook problems on the same content. All of the survey respondents were Black female undergraduate students enrolled in a STEM major at a historically black college. Students reported that they were better able to identify with the examples and problems using Black Music as a context. Study participants also indicated that making enjoyable music motivated them to work harder than they would on textbook problems. Of the 33 study participants, 60% had no prior experience programming, and 63% of the students expressed an interest in taking further computer science coursework as an elective. The authors explain the sequence of assignments they used to help students understand introductory computer science concepts, and share lessons learned from using Black Music as a tool in the classroom.