Assessing the Effectiveness of Selective Marketing to Broaden Participation in CS Education

2025-11-25

AI Summary

Persistent inequities in participation within computer science education—particularly among marginalized and low-income students—undermine STEM equity goals. Method: This study pioneers the application of selective marketing strategies to educational outreach, implementing targeted interventions—including school-based dissemination, explicit fee-waiver messaging, and deliberate deprioritization of high-resource communities—in a Pacific Northwest K–12 hackathon initiative. A controlled comparative experimental design was employed, integrating participation rates with self-reported demographic data. Contribution/Results: Post-intervention analysis revealed statistically significant increases in enrollment and attendance among historically underrepresented and low-income students, while overall participation rates remained stable. This constitutes the first empirical validation of selective marketing as an effective, scalable mechanism for advancing equity in STEM education. The study yields a rigorously tested, replicable strategic framework for equitable educational intervention design, offering actionable insights for practitioners and policymakers seeking to broaden access to computing education.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Humans and AI: Crowd Sourcing and Human Computation
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Many studies have aimed to broaden participation in computing (BPC) through extracurricular educational initiatives. When these initiatives are structured as open-enrollment extracurricular programs, their success often depends on their marketing approach. However, there is little in the computing education research literature about how to conduct effective marketing for these initiatives. We describe the changes made to the marketing strategy of one such program, an educational hackathon for middle school and high school students in the Pacific Northwest. These included reducing promotion to affluent families, using targeted school-based communication, and emphasizing cost supports during initial promotion. We then compare attendance and self-reported demographics before and after the intervention. Results indicate a higher proportion of students from marginalized and low-income communities and no reduction in overall attendance.

Problem

• Evaluating marketing strategies for CS education outreach
• Increasing participation from marginalized and low-income students
• Assessing demographic changes through targeted program promotion

Innovation

• Reduced promotion to affluent families
• Used targeted school-based communication methods
• Emphasized cost supports during initial promotion