The SPORT-C Intervention: An Integration of Sports, Case-Based Pedagogy and Systems Thinking Learning
Published in Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Applied Computing (CAC 2026)
Authors: Jeffrey Basoah, William Scherer, Karis Boyd-Sinkler, Reid Bailey
The STEM field is unrepresentative of the population it serves. Due to a lack of cultural relevance in STEM courses, there is a dissociation between the lived experience of students from underrepresented racial groups (URG) and STEM course material. The SPORT-C intervention is a framework that combines sports, systems thinking learning, and a case-based pedagogy into an activity that can be used in any STEM course. A pilot study was conducted to determine the viability of the SPORT-C intervention in a classroom setting and determine if it was worth further investigating and if any impact differed by racial identity. The findings from this study implicate that the SPORT-C intervention has an impact on the motivation levels of students to participate in STEM courses.
Recommended citation: Basoah, J., Scherer, W., Boyd-Sinkler, K., and Bailey, R. In press. The SPORT-C Intervention: An Integration of Sports, Case-Based Pedagogy, and Systems Thinking Learning. In H. R. Arabia (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Applied Computing (CAC 2026). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.11755