Broadening Participation in Introductory Computer Science: Investigating Self-Assessment Practices for Increasing Student Learning and Self-Efficacy in Two Institutional Contexts

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by generating new knowledge of how to support students’ self-efficacy in computer science and provide practical pedagogical strategies that instructors can implement to address equity in computer science education. In computer science education, students must develop problem-solving skills that include the ability to apply core computing concepts alongside more general skills like problem decomposition and abstraction. However, an often-overlooked aspect of the learning process in computer science is the development and use of metacognitive skills, the practices of self-monitoring and reflection that learners must use to be successful. This project intends to study the effectiveness of an intervention designed to scaffold the development of computer science students’ meta-cognitive skills through directed practice with self-assessment. This approach has shown promise in prior education research but has not been adapted to the computing context. The significance of this project is that it has the potential to provide new robust evidence for improved pedagogical strategies that will benefit students in computer science concerning both their learning and motivational outcomes. This benefits both success in the introductory classes being studied as well as persistence in future courses. Furthermore, this has the potential to contribute to the mission of broadening participation in computing by supporting students from underrepresented groups in computing to have good experiences in introductory courses and beyond. This project aims to leverage prior research in educational psychology to develop an intervention to support students’ development of self-assessment skills. In addition, this project seeks to conduct an experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of the intervention, looking at both students’ learning outcomes and motivational outcomes in introductory computer science classes. The development and testing of the intervention will take place with around 1,000 students at two different types of institutions, a large public university, and a large community college. This setting should allow the project to assess the impact of the intervention across a variety of introductory computer science courses and student populations to increase the generalizability of the findings. In the context of a field experiment design, the development of the intervention seeks to involve the collection of extensive feedback on the usability and suitability of the intervention from both instructors and students with a specific focus on students’ experiences from underrepresented groups in computing. By improving students’ self-assessment skills, this project has the potential to give computer science instructors a new set of practices that they can use to help their students’ learning and motivation outcomes and advance the goal of broadening participation in computing. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.