An Overview of Outreach Actions Developed in Higher Education Computer Sciences

Abstract

The tripod of Brazilian universities is composed of teaching, research, and outreach. Through outreach actions, it is possible to connect scientific knowledge and society’s needs. Thus, supported by democratic values and equal rights, they can promote local social development. Understanding the social importance of outreach actions, we ask: how are outreach actions being carried out in universities? To answer this question, we did a systematic literature review considering the publications of the last 10 years in the following digital databases: ACM, CEIE, IEEE, RBIE, Renote, ScienceDirect, SBIE, and WIE. We used twenty-five keywords, one inclusion criterion, and six exclusion ones. After collecting the data, we critically analyzed the selected articles from a Freirean perspective, building an overview of the outreach actions in the Computer Sciences area. One of the eight items of this panorama shows, for example, that 61.54% of the outreach actions address topics related to computational thinking or teaching programming. Observing the general panorama found, we can conclude that the outreach actions presented a hegemony of study topics, a specific focus on a certain audience, and a low level of student protagonism, among other issues.