Beyond "Awareness": If We Teach Inclusive Design, Will Students Act On It?

Motivation: Many university CS programs have begun teaching various types of CS-related societal issues using approaches such as ethics, Responsible CS, inclusive design, and more. However, some recent research suggests that, although these programs have been able to teach awareness, students often fail to act upon this awareness. To address this problem, University X's CS program tried an unusual approach-integrating hands-on inclusive design skills in small ways across all four years of the CS major. But did it work? That is, did the students who experienced this change across the major actually build more inclusive technology than the students who did not experience it? Objectives: This paper aims to answer this through addressing two research questions: (RQ1): Did students who learned inclusive design across the curriculum act to create more inclusive software? (RQ2): How did inclusivity (or lack thereof) manifest in students' projects? Method: To investigate these RQs, we conducted a case study of 22 term-long CS projects built by 22 teams consisting of a total of 92 3rd- and 4th-year CS students. Half of the student teams had experienced courses that had integrated inclusive design and the other half had not. The inclusive design elements University X taught were those of the GenderMag inclusive design method, so evaluating the students' term-long projects was done by GenderMag experts-industry-experienced UX and Software professionals with real-world GenderMag experience. Results: The inclusiveness of students' projects was higher Post-GenderMag, with fewer reports of inclusivity bugs and higher inclusivity ratings. Experts' evaluations also revealed the ways in which bias (e.g. bias against risk-averse users) and inclusion (e.g. inclusion of users with diverse information processing styles) appeared in students' projects. Implications: We believe this to be the first published evidence that compares student-built technology's inclusiveness before vs. after they have been taught inclusive design. These positive results suggest that teaching inclusive design across the curriculum can impact students beyond simply heightening awareness-moving them to act upon this new understanding by building technology that more inclusively serves a wider spectrum of society.