Pedagogical practices that promote equity in the classroom play a crucial role in broadening participation and enhancing student success. These practices directly address the critical challenge of low diversity in the field of computing.

We implemented four equity-focused practices in a large CS1 course and gathered student reflection on how these practices impacted their performance, confidence, and sense of belonging. Additionally, we asked students to respond to open-ended questions to capture any other effects these practices might have had. In this poster, we present an analysis of 1536 open-ended responses. This allowed students to suggest specific ways these practices impacted or highlight impacts beyond the three constructs we were measuring. We utilized thematic analysis to find insights from these open-ended responses. The codes from 1536 responses (384 students) resulted in 9 categories, among which four were most evident. Our findings suggest that these practices helped students catch up with the course, feel less stressed, improve their understanding of the content, and manage their time more effectively.

Our work shows that equitable practices can have effects beyond common measures like performance, confidence, and sense of belonging, with these impacts being experienced by significant portions of the student body.