What factors influence persistence in project-based programming courses at community colleges?
The rapid adoption of emergent technologies is creating significant shortfall in the CS/IT workforce. With not enough students in the educational pipeline to meet the
forthcoming demand over the next decade, community colleges are making the effort to train confident, knowledgeable, and self-driven
workers in this field. Project-based learning (PBL) has been shown to be effective for these ends, but it poses distinct challenges in resource-limited community college contexts since it may require more time, preparation, and motivation than other teaching modalities, from both the student and the instructor. We studied fifteen sections of an introductory project-based Python course taught at six community colleges, investigating several features of PBL theorized to be particular barriers to student persistence, particularly among women and other identities traditionally underrepresented in technical fields. We describe successes and challenges faced by students in these areas and suggest implications for project-based learning curriculum and platform design.
Fri 22 MarDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
10:45 - 12:00 | Persistence in CS and RetentionPapers at Meeting Room D135 Chair(s): Jennifer Wong-Ma University of California, Irvine | ||
10:45 25mTalk | What factors influence persistence in project-based programming courses at community colleges? Papers Chris Bogart Carnegie Mellon University, Marshall An Carnegie Mellon University, Eric Keylor Carnegie Mellon University, Pawanjeet Singh Carnegie Mellon University, Jaromir Savelka Carnegie Mellon University, Majd Sakr Carnegie Mellon University DOI | ||
11:10 25mTalk | A Longitudinal Study of the Relationship between Early Undergraduate Research and Academic Outcomes in Computer Science Papers Kamen Redfield University of California, San Diego, Sukham Sidhu University of California, San Diego, Zackary Glazewski University of California, Santa Barbara, Cynthia Lee Stanford University, Diba Mirza University of California Santa Barbara, Christine Alvarado University of California San Diego DOI | ||
11:35 25mTalk | Exploring Computing Students' Sense of Belonging Before and After a Collaborative Learning Course Papers Morgan Fong University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Shan Huang University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Abdussalam Alawini University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Mariana Silva University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Geoffrey Herman University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign DOI | ||