The Role of Near-Peer Mentors in Middle-School Students’ Digitally Empowered App Design

• In Event: Empowerment-Focused Computing in Constructionist Learning Environments

Abstract

Purpose:
This study builds on research around the impacts of near-peer mentors in learning (Kafai et al., 2008; Clarke-Midura et al., 2018), with a focus on how they can contribute to students’ development of their digital empowerment (Tissenabum et al., 2019). This study focuses on near-peer mentors - who are already embedded within student communities - as co-designers and facilitators in a computational action-focused (Tissenbaum et al., 2019) summer camp.

Theoretical framework:
This work is driven by Tissenbaum et al.’s (2019) idea of computational action, specifically the need to support students’ digital empowerment in the process of computational learning. This calls for situating activities in personally relevant and authentic contexts, showing students that their work can be impactful within their lives and communities, and enabling them to see an array of diverse computing futures. In this project, we utilize Costanza-Chock’s (2020) design justice ideology, which highlights the importance of including users and existing communities in participatory design. In practice, we utilized existing structures within our community of recruited students to scaffold students’ digitally empowered app development.

Methods:
As part of the 2025 [blinded] summer camp, we conducted a five-hour long training session for high school students (some of whom had participated as students in previous implementations) from partner community organizations to serve as near-peer mentors. In this training, they were introduced to the goal of the camp and MIT App Inventor (Patton et al., 2019). They also collectively brainstormed the theme for the student to design apps around. During the following two-week long camp, the mentors worked as near-peer mentors, helping facilitate the curriculum, and leading app design brainstorming conversations with the students. In this poster, we conduct artifact analysis of the different stages of theme development, beginning with the mentors’ training day brainstorming, to students’ final app design. We also analyze audio data from students and mentors’ discussion of the theme, to further draw connections between the different stages of artifacts.

Results:
On our training day, mentors collectively brainstormed ideas and themes that were relevant to, and impacted, their middle school mentees. On Day 4 of the camp, they were asked to lead the discussion about the theme with the students. Artifact analysis highlights the different ways students took up these discussions in their final app designs. We highlight how specific prompts and questions from the mentors supported students’ idea generation, and how this resulted in the students building personally meaningful apps. Audio conversations and mentor interviews also show how comfort and safety in the space is connected to these peer mentors conversations.

Significance:
This study highlights how near-peer mentors' expertise can inform constructionist empowerment-driven curriculum such that it aligns with themes that are relevant, meaningful, and impactful for students. Furthermore, under the guidance of near-peer mentors that are insiders and members of students’ communities, students become comfortable enough in incorporating important themes that may require a higher level of vulnerability. Ultimately, this work highlights how co-design and co-facilitation with peer-mentors can contribute to students’ digital empowerment.

Authors

• Ashita Bawankule, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• David A. Hopping, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Mike Tissenbaum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign