Examining the Realities and Nuances of ‘Low-stakes’ Interest-Driven Learning Environments

The push to develop low-stakes and personally meaningful computer science experiences is creating novel opportunities to broaden participation in CS. These opportunities have become increasingly present across contexts and have expanded the possibilities for introducing and sustaining student participation in computing. However, while these experiences tend to be effective ways for engaging new participants and new forms of participation, we must be careful to not overlook how ’high-stakes’ these experiences might be for learners. To explore this tension, this paper describes two case studies of students engaging in coding and computational thinking with Minecraft Education Edition. The first case study involves a 7-year-old Black and Latina girl who experiences significant frustration when her computer program destroys significant portions of her project. The second is from a Latino boy who avoids using the coding capabilities in Minecraft EDU out of fear that the code might not work properly. Building on these case studies, this paper suggests that the field take steps to ensure that the language and actions associated with low-stakes and high-stakes are reflective of learner perceptions, and that we design learning experiences that appropriately reflect this nuance.