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Understanding similarities and differences in students across first-year computing majors

Authors:

Leonard Bohmann,

Allison Carter,

Christopher Cischke,

Leo UreelAuthors Info & Claims

2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757695

Published: 01 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

In November 2014, Michigan Technological University's departments of computer science (CS) and electrical and computer engineering (ECE) were selected to participate in NCWIT's Extension Services for Undergraduate Programs (ES-UP). ES-UP, supported by NSF and Google, is designed to help departments develop strategies to recruit and retain women in computing and engineering majors. Both departments have enrolled a low number of women in their programs and have had lower retention rates than other departments on campus. As part of the ES-UP initiatives, we surveyed our first-year students in Fall 2015 and followed up with a second survey in January 2016. The goal of the initial survey was to learn what attracted students to their major while the second focused on their experiences during their first semester. Examination of the students across the four majors in the two departments in separate colleges provides a unique perspective on students' attraction to and persistence in computing-related majors.

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Cited By

Oleson AXie BSalac JEverson JKivuva FKo A(2022)A Decade of Demographics in Computing Education Research: A Critical Review of Trends in Collection, Reporting, and UseProceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3501385.3543967(323-343)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3501385.3543967

Index Terms

Understanding similarities and differences in students across first-year computing majors
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
  2. User characteristics
    1. Gender

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

2378 pages

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IEEE Press

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Published: 01 October 2016

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Cited By

Oleson AXie BSalac JEverson JKivuva FKo A(2022)A Decade of Demographics in Computing Education Research: A Critical Review of Trends in Collection, Reporting, and UseProceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3501385.3543967(323-343)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3501385.3543967

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