CPATH-2: Advancing the Successful IT Student through Enhanced Computational Thinking (ASSECT)

University Of Massachusetts Boston, Dorchester MA

Investigators

Abstract

This CPATH award brings together community colleges and universities in five regions including Bunker Hill Community College and University of Massachusetts Boston in Massachusetts, Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University in Virginia, Ivy Tech Community College and Purdue University in Indiana, Cameron University in Oklahoma and City College of San Francisco and California State - Monterrey in California. The partners plan to revitalize undergraduate computing education through new research that correlates Computational Thinking (CT) with the new Information Technology Volume developed by the Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education of the Association for Computing Machinery to develop a CT framework for researching and building instructional elements. This resulting product identifies core computing concepts, methodologies, frameworks, and tools that may be applied across a variety of institutions and inform teaching and learning in undergraduate computing in a variety of environments. Each of the five partnerships consists of a paired team comprised of a university and a community college. The benefit of this arrangement is to ensure the focus is firmly set on undergraduate computing and that the outcomes and findings of this project develop core CT skills that improve matriculation and transfer from lower to upper division IT and computer science programs. Intellectual Merit: This project develops innovative instructional scenarios and related assessments specifically aligned to develop and enhance CT outcomes for lower division computing students. The project partners will develop instructional elements and techniques that not only impart cognitive knowledge but that also pose authentic situations for students wherein CT attributes can be developed and demonstrated. In order to differentiate between cognitive knowledge gains and improvement in CT skills, faculty working with the treatment groups will develop enhanced student assessments using Principled Assessment Design for Inquiry which produces evidence-centered assessment design. An excellent team has been assembled to lead this project which has the potential to produce new disciplinary foundations and serve as a model for computing for the future. Broader Impacts: In explicitly including lower division and community college IT courses in computational thinking frameworks, this proposal breaks new ground. The project is to be disseminated to a broad audience covering the spectrum of undergraduate computing education and broadening participation organization. Each regional partner has additional regional dissemination foci, and the team is particularly interested in national dissemination of the results obtained through the pedagogical approaches investigated in this work, particularly as they may inform others with an interest in improving matriculation and transfer from lower to upper division IT programs. The models and results from the project thus have the potential to reach a diverse set of institutions with different student populations and thus provide pathways for preparing computing students for the workforce of the future.