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Creating Connected Computer Scientists

Tue, April 17, 10:35am to 12:05pm, Millennium Broadway New York Times Square, Floor: Seventh Floor, Room 7.04

Abstract

Purpose
“The Connected Learner” project in the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) at UNC Charlotte is designed to connect Computer Science students to their peers, purpose, and profession, with an overarching goal of developing students’ identities as computer scientists.
Our approach is three-pronged:
1. Connection to Peers through Classroom Engagement: Active Learning Summer Institutes provide stipends to CCI faculty to support adoption of active learning techniques that encourage social learning by connecting students to peers from the very first course. Lightweight teams are deployed in introductory computing classes to catalyze peer interactions without pressures from high stakes grading.
2. Connection to Purpose through Community Engagement: A service-learning computing course in tandem with a student service organization provide opportunities for community engagement, enabling students to make meaningful contributions to society through computing while developing leadership skills.
3. Connection to Profession through Industry Engagement: Industry-sourced challenges for upper-level capstone projects connect students to industry and facilitate professional development of teamwork, communication, and social skills.

Theoretical Framework
The Connected Learner applies a systems theory of change to align CCI with our education innovation model. Department chairs, faculty, and students act as key change agents in an interconnected educational context with a unified vision (Senge, 2000; Steiner, 1988). At the chair and faculty levels, we incorporate incentives and support for teaching through our Center for Education Innovation and annual Active Learning Summer Institutes. By internalizing teaching development and resources within our own college framework, we align the teaching environment in CCI with the Connected Learner vision. Thus, students experience a holistic and synergistic computer science education across the curriculum.

Methods & data sources
The Connected Learner deploys a mixed-method design of qualitative and quantitative measures to address research questions and project evaluation at the organizational, faculty, and student levels. Organizational measures focus on resources, partnerships, policy, and strategy modifications that reward teaching scholarship. Data include changes to organizational policy and practice, stakeholder discussions, and the adoption of new teaching practices. Faculty measures focus on attitudes about teaching, mentoring, college climate, pedagogical research, and Summer Institute participation, captured via surveys and interviews. Student measures focus on attitudes and perceptions (course feedback, climate), behaviors (engagement activity, academic performance), and cognitive outcomes (knowledge gains, experiential learning, retention, graduation). Data are triangulated via course surveys, focus groups, external surveys, and retention and graduation metrics.

Results & Scholarly significance
As Year 3 of the project begins, we observe the following results across the project levels:
Organization: 24 undergraduate courses redesigned with active learning pedagogies, emphasizing peer learning in early-level courses.
Faculty: Two Summer Institutes provided training to 17 faculty, nearly 25% of CCI’s faculty population.
Students: 5% decrease in Introductory CS course failure rates; CCI students reported significantly higher computing identity than a national comparison group (CRA, 2017).
Results signify that our systems model of change is demonstrating positive effects on student outcomes via classroom engagement and peer connections. In the middle of the project, our current efforts are connecting students to purpose and profession via industry and community engagement.

Authors