Computer Science Behind Bars: Lessons Learned from Teaching Incarcerated Students in Prisons and Jails
This program is tentative and subject to change.
“Behind bars” educational programs (i.e. those offered to individuals in jail, prison, etc.) have been shown to improve social and economic outcomes upon release. Over the past [Anonymized] years, our organization [Anonymous] has been running a series of classes behind bars with an increasing emphasis on computer education. This poster will present two years of data for our four offered computer science courses whose topics cover Python programming, app development, web design, and 2D video game development. Most of the courses were taught remotely via Zoom, which has some unique advantages in incarcerated environments which we will discuss. Specifically, this poster will discuss: (i) qualitative lessons learned from our extensive interactions with prison education systems, (ii) our latest preliminary empirical results collected via our IRB approved surveys, (iii) insights into the common challenges for collecting said data, and (iv) questions on which we would like to solicit feedback from the greater computer science educational community.