Jumpstart is a series of introductory workshops aimed at all incoming CCI students to develop foundational technical computer skills. These workshops draw inspiration from organisations such as The Carpentries and MIT’s Missing Semester course, both of which emphasise meta-skills for technical learning. Following their introduction last academic year, the workshops are being redeveloped for September with a specific focus on inclusion.
As detailed in my intervention plan, attainment gaps in the percentage of First/2:1 awards on CCI courses are most significant at the postgraduate level between home vs overseas, and home white vs BAME students (UAL ActiveDashboards 2026a). One contributing factor that I have observed is the lack of time during shorter courses for students to ‘catch up’ if they struggle with foundational skills. Adapting to work in a technical computing context can be overwhelming for many students, and this may be exacerbated for students with additional barriers to access.
Last year’s workshops received positive feedback, but suffered from declining engagement over successive sessions. To address this, I organised a series of informal reflective discussions with students, academics, technicians and support staff. I conducted this work with my colleague Mayra Berrones.
The above diagram maps proposed changes and existing positive strategies that were mentioned in these discussions. The majority of feedback focussed on the development of self-directed and peer learning strategies. As an analysis of all dimensions would be too broad, this report will explore two proposed changes that explore this aspect, indicated in bold on the diagram.
1. Multilingual Note-taking
My interest in introductory technical learning stems from personal experiences of difficulty in learning to code as a female student in a male-dominated engineering department. I feel a strong sympathy with students feeling stuck in the early stages of their courses and excluded from a dominant culture. While sharing some similarities, however, many of my students experience distinct barriers to belonging due to language differences, racial discrimination, disability and financial pressures (UAL, 2025).
In light of the home/overseas attainment gap, I wanted to prioritise accessibility for EAL students in the second iteration of Jumpstart. As a native English speaker with neither experience of learning in another language, nor expertise in language development, it felt important to discuss this aspect with colleagues who have more experience of multilingual teaching, and with the Language Development team. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to interview EAL students about this element, something I would prioritise in future work.
One colleague, who uses English as an additional language, mentioned a project she had worked on that framed learning computing as language-learning, acknowledging the unfamiliarity of technical terminology. This metaphor is reflected in Seymour Papert’s account of technical learning in Mindstorms, emphasising that the development of mathematical skills is akin to learning a new language, and that computers have the potential to provide “a context which is to learning mathematics what living in France is to learning French” (Papert, 1980).
After discussing this idea with the Language Development team, we realised that this would require careful framing. Most technical programming terminology uses a (specialised) form of English, reflecting the imperial history of computing and the persistent language bias of the field (Benjamin, 2019). The framing of ‘everyone is learning another language’ risks trivialising the added difficulty faced by non-native English speakers in adapting to this terminology, which can go beyond a simple translation problem. Metaphorical terms such as ‘Desktop’, for example, rely on the English-language referent, which might not exist or have the same significance in another language (Santini, 2018).
In addition to ensuring there would be a language support tutor present, the Language Development Team suggested explicitly inviting students to translate technical terms into their main languages. This reminded me of a method I have previously used, where I would enter new terms into a collaborative notes document shared with the class. In one session, students spontaneously added their own translations to this document, resulting in a collaborative glossary with multiple annotations.
of computing terms developed by The Carpentries, https://glosario.carpentries.org/
This intervention is well-supported by Universal Design for Learning (UDL) recommendations for cultivating respect across languages and dialects, and including multiple forms of representation (CAST, 2024). Including ‘common-language’ translations of technical terms can involve all students in this task, rather than just singling out EAL students. For Jumpstart, we will formalise this into a dedicated task during the workshops, where students add their own translations and definitions, and also highlight the existence of glosario, a multilingual glossary developed for this purpose.
Students I spoke to about introductory technical learning experiences cited vocabularies and cheat-sheets as particularly helpful, indicating that these resources can be useful to all students. To maintain the integrity of the resource, the resulting glossaries will be merged into a permanent ‘static’ version on the wiki that links out to the student-edited ones.
Ultimately, it can be useful to frame learning as a collaborative linguistic exercise, while acknowledging that English language and references dominate programming instruction. Translational work presents additional cognitive load for EAL students (LaCosse et al., 2020), and making this explicitly part of the class structure could mitigate this impact.
2. Pair Programming
Another core issue for CCI postgraduate courses is a low sense of community, with this section scoring third-lowest (out of 11 total) in the 2026 PTES, and lowest of 9 in years prior (UAL ActiveDashboards 2026b). While the initial development of Jumpstart aimed to create a ‘welcoming environment’ for students, this was somewhat unidirectional and ill-defined. In this context, I define ‘community’ to mean a sense of shared responsibility for learning. Taking bell hooks’ encouragement to see classroom engagement as a collaborative endeavour (hooks, 1994), we wanted to include more opportunities for students to engage with one another in the workshops.
Almost every member of academic staff we spoke to about this aspect recommended moving sessions in-person, citing the relative ease of community-building on-site. This presents a tension, as online workshops have clear benefits for accessibility and inclusivity, particularly for disabled students or anyone experiencing visa issues. Cavanagh and Jacquemin (2015) found minimal difference to grades in online vs in-person learning, though they note that online learning can widen existing achievement gaps. On students’ sense of community, Lu and Zhang (2024) note that learners can feel disconnected in online environments, emphasising the need for specific and targeted community development.
One structured technique for community-building in a technical context is ‘pair programming’, in which students work on coding tasks in pairs or small groups. A ‘driver’ in the pair completes the task on their machine, while a ‘navigator’ listens, observes, and helps, with roles periodically reversed. Pair programming builds community through structured peer learning and dialogue between students. This technique is used in online, in-person, and hybrid environments (Alex, 2026), and it is associated with positive outcomes for learning and collaboration skills (Hawlitschek et al., 2023).
source: https://teaching-programming.github.io/ CC BY-NC-SA
Group work in an introductory context needs to be considered carefully, as it can make the cognitive load of new skills more severe, and exclusive dynamics can lead to marginalised students feeling undermined or excluded (Desvages et. al, 2026). Explicit structure and a “collaboration script” for interaction can address this, while guides such as the Recurse Center’s Social Rules can help to articulate subtly exclusionary behaviours. Many of the UDL recommendations for “Fostering collaboration, interdependence, and collective learning” are relevant here, including ensuring clear responsibilities and protocols, and using community agreements (CAST, 2024).
The literature on pair programming makes it clear that engagement in collaborative learning depends more on instructional design than any specific delivery mode. To accommodate the broadest possible range of learners, both online and in-person versions of the course will be scheduled. Technical exercises in the workshops will be restructured to function as pair programming tasks (while maintaining the option of solo work), with care taken to clearly communicate structure and roles.
Conclusion
Both changes discussed in this report target the development of a culture of peer learning and support in a broader context of teaching ‘meta-skills’ for learning. The involvement of students in building a learning community is an example of a ‘high impact practice’ that is positively associated with student engagement, and is particularly important for students that face intersecting barriers to access (Bamber and Jones, 2015).
As optional courses can risk widening attainment gaps, there is an open question as to whether this material should be integrated directly into classes. As a technician, I am not able to change course content, but it remains important to consider how extracurricular courses can benefit, rather than harm students that don’t attend.
An observation from the Electronics workshop is that when a minority of students develop a skill in an inclusive and friendly environment, they are more likely to help their peers, and standards rise across the board. While this form of interdependence is by no means guaranteed, my hope is that by making these aspects an explicit part of classroom design we can foster a more collaborative and inclusive culture at the CCI.
References
Alex, B., Llewellyn-MacRae, C., Orzechowski, P. and Stephens, L. (2026) Learning Together Across Modes: Online and On-Site Pair Programming in a Fusion Course, in Teaching Programming Across Disciplines. Available at: https://teaching-programming.github.io/book/C23_pair-programming-fusion.html (Accessed: 20 July 2026)
Benjamin, R. (2019), Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Polity Press, ISBN: 9781509526437
CAST (2024). CAST Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. Available at: https://udlguidelines.cast.org (Accessed: 20 July 2026)
Cavanaugh, J., & Jacquemin, S. J. (2015). A Large Sample Comparison of Grade Based Student Learning Outcomes in Online vs. Face-to-Face Courses, Online Learning, 19 (2).
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/biology/826
Desvages, C., Orzechowski, P., Blankinship, B. and Noè, U. (2026) Structured Group Work With Assigned Asymmetrical Roles and Switching: Lessons From Pair Programming Across Disciplines, in Teaching Programming Across Disciplines. Available at: https://teaching-programming.github.io/book/C36_pair-programming-across-disciplines.html (Accessed: 20 July 2026).
Hawlitschek, A., Berndt, S. and Schulz, S. (2023) Empirical research on pair programming in higher education: a literature review, Computer Science Education, 33(3), pp. 400–428. doi: 10.1080/08993408.2022.2039504.
hooks, b., (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-90807-8
Bamber V. and Jones A. (2015), Challenging Students: Enabling Inclusive Learning, In: Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 4th Edition. Routledge, London
LaCosse, J., Canning, E.A., Bowman, N.A., Murphy, M.C. and Logel, C. (2020) A social-belonging intervention improves STEM outcomes for students who speak English as a second language. Science advances, 6(40), p.eabb6543.
Lu, H., and Zhang, X. (2024). Multi-level students’ sense of community development in hybrid and online learning environments at higher educational institutions: a systematic literature review. Interactive Learning Environments, 32(9), 5397–5420. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2023.2214803
Papert, S.A., (1980) Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic books
Santini, S., (2018) Semiotic internationalization and localization of computer programs. arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.04342
UAL (2025) Access and Participation Plan 2025-26 to 2028-29, Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/public-information/office-for-students-info (Accessed: 20 July 2026)
UAL ActiveDashboards (2026a) Postgraduate Attainment and Profiles, 2022–2025, (internal) University of the Arts London
UAL ActiveDashboards (2026b) PTES Results Year on Year Summary, 2026, (internal) University of the Arts London