There has been an overwhelming lack of participation in computing among African American women. Music has previously been used as an approach to increase engagement and desire to persist in computer science education. The aim of the study is to understand if Black music can be used as a culturally relevant pedagogical approach to increasing engagement in computer science for African American college women. The participants will be African American women at an all-women’s HBCU in an introductory non-majors computer science course. The study is a between-groups study in which one computer science class is given a music project (treatment group) and another class (control group) has no music project. A survey instrument will be used to measure engagement, confidence, desire to persist in computer science, and self-efficacy among other things in these two groups. The study is awaiting IRB approval and to be conducted.
