UCL Computer Science launches new outreach activity with organisation Thinking Black

Thinking Black aims to educate, equip and empower young Black British voices with skills relating to academic and creative writing, and public speaking. Working with Black state-school students aged 11 to 18 years, Thinking Black runs writing, speaking and arts programmes. The founder of the organisation and current UCL PhD student, Hope Oloye launched Thinking Black in 2020 with "a vision of multiple radical programmes, engaging students at all stages of secondary school." Hope shares a statement on the new partnership:
“It's been great working alongside UCL CS to create a new module for our Year 12 ACT Essay Prize. Creating engaging, interdisciplinary courses that introduce students to new perspectives is at the core of what we do and we're glad to be able to further our work in this way!” 

As part of the new partnership with UCL Computer Science, Thinking Black has introduced a new module in Artificial Intelligence and Bias exploring the benefits of AI and social justice. The new module is being designed and delivered by Joshua Omolegan, a current 3rd-year undergraduate studying Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Joshua has had experience facilitating machine learning workshops with the Google Developer Students Club Oxford, and has had extensive experience tutoring GCSE and A-level Maths, Further Maths and Computer Science. Joshua shared a short statement about the new module with UCL Computer Science: 

"The AI and Bias module aims to introduce Black A-level students to popular machine learning algorithms and to how bias can occur in such models. Through lectures and discussion sessions, students are encouraged to think critically about the effects of the commercial use of biased models and to evaluate whether ML does more harm than good, taking into account both positive and negative case studies of its applications.”

What does the Thinking Black programme involve?

There are three phases which include knowledge building, skills development and an essay submission with a celebratory event and prizes for winners at the end. The first phase consists of a series lectures and seminars and students are encouraged to conduct independent research. During the second stage of skills development, students attend a skills bootcamp with additional one to one support sessions. Draft submissions and feedback are shared at this stage leading onto the final stage of submitting responses to essays. 60 students have enrolled onto the Thinking Black programmes and positive feedback has been received so far with participants finding:

“The content delivery was engaging and inspiring” and “very interesting, informative and clear with just enough information and space for reflection” whilst others stated that they had gained “a wider understanding of some of the things I had thought about or experienced and I feel better able to articulate these ideas now."

The department will be hosting an on-campus day during the summer with the participants attending admissions talks, and computer science taster sessions with interactive research groups. Winners will be announced during the on-campus day visit with prizes being awarded.

Feedback from the department about the partnership has been very positive with the departmental manager, Karin Alderson stating:
‘This programme is truly inspiring and we are delighted that so many students have expressed an interest in taking part. We hope this will help to ensure that future student cohorts more accurately reflect the talent that exists across all communities locally and more globally’