Competitive Enrollment Policies in Computing Departments Negatively Predict First-Year Students' Sense of Belonging, Self-Efficacy, and Perception of Department

Nguyen, An; Lewis, Colleen M.

doi:10.1145/3328778.3366805

Cited by 43 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Nguyen & Lewis [16] used survey data from 1,245 students in 80 computing departments along with a dataset of departmental policies to show that competitive enrolment negatively affected student sense of belonging. This highlights another environmental variable that negatively impacts sense of belonging that is within the control of higher education institutions.…”

Section: Sense Of Belonging In Computingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Mooney

Becker

2020

United Kingdom &Amp; Ireland Computing Education Research Conference.

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Creating inclusive learning environments for all students is of primary importance. Student sense of belonging is an important part of this. However, sense of belonging can show variations according to factors such as ethnicity and gender as well as influencing attributes such as motivation and persistence. We utilised a survey adapted from the "Math Sense of Belonging Scale" to examine the relationship between undergraduate computer science students' sense of belonging, gender identity, and self-declared minority status. We observed a lower sense of belonging in students who identified as women who also self-identified as being part of a minority group. However, students who identified as women who did not identify as belonging to a minority had a sense of belonging comparable to those identifying as men. Our results provide insight that may help us improve the sense of belonging of our undergraduate students, particularly those identifying as women and as belonging to a minority in computer science. It has also brought to our attention that action needs to be taken to mitigate the potentially disproportionately negative consequences that COVID-19 may have on these students due to reduced opportunities for social interaction and the negative impact that this has on sense of belonging.

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Section: Sense Of Belonging In Computingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Mooney

Becker

2020

United Kingdom &Amp; Ireland Computing Education Research Conference.

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“…The restrictions were significant, creating a highly competitive environment for those hoping to major and still turning away many students who were interested in the major. As many of the metrics we evaluate would likely be impacted by this change, particularly for underrepresented students based on recent work by Nguyen and Lewis [30], we end our analysis at the point those changes were made. In addition, we need to allow students time to graduate after they take the CS1 course for a number of our metrics to be accurate (e.g., retention and time-to-degree).…”

Section: Switchedmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Longitudinal Evaluation of a Best Practices CS1

Salguero

McAuley

Simon

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

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Over a decade ago, the CS1 course for students without prior programming experience at a large research-intensive university was redesigned to incorporate three best practices in teaching programming: Media Computation, Pair Programming, and Peer Instruction. The purpose of this revision was to improve the quality of the course, appeal to a larger student body, and improve retention in the major. An initial analysis of the course indicated an increase in pass rates and 1-yr retention of students in the major. Now that time has passed and those students impacted by the revision have had time to graduate, this longitudinal study revisits and expands on these prior findings through examining student outcomes over a twelve year period (2001 through 2013). The student outcomes examined include failure rates in CS1, retention rates in the major, rates of switching into the major, time to degree, and performance in subsequent major courses. We compare these findings against similar metrics collected for another CS1 course at the same institution that caters to students with prior programming experience and did not make changes during this same time period. Overall, the inclusion of media computation, pair programming, and peer instruction corresponds to a significant improvement in passing rates for CS1 as well as retention of majors from CS1 through graduation. In turn, there is no indication that this larger group of students experienced any harm in terms of lower grades in upper-division courses or their time to degree.

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“…They examined students' sense of belonging in computing in introductory computing (CS1) courses across 15 institutions, comparing incoming sense of belonging for different demographic groups and examining how belonging changed from the beginning to the end of the course, as well as trying to understand factors that predict sense of belonging [26]. Their results showed that women have a lower incoming sense of belonging than men, while Black, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander (BLNPI) students had a higher incoming sense of belonging than their majority counterparts, contrary to previous work inside and outside of computing [11,21,33]. Additionally, they found that sense of belonging declines for all students from the beginning to the end of the course, and that this trend is especially pronounced for women [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship Between Sense of Belonging and Student Outcomes in CS1 and Beyond

Krause-Levy

Griswold

Porter

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research

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Students' sense of belonging has been found to be connected to student retention in higher education. In computing education, prior studies suggest that a hostile culture and a feeling of nonbelonging can lead women, Black, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander students to drop out of the computing field at a disproportionately high rate. Yet, we know relatively little about how computing students' sense of belonging presents and evolves (if at all) through their college courses, particularly in courses beyond the introductory level, and little is known about how sense of belonging impacts student outcomes in computing. In an extension of a previous study, we examined students' sense of belonging in six early undergraduate computer science courses across three consecutive quarters at a large research-intensive institution in North America. We found that women and first generation students have a lower incoming sense of belonging across all courses. When exploring sense of belonging's tie to student outcomes we found that lower sense of belonging was correlated with negative course outcomes in terms of pass rates and course performance. We also found that it is less tied to student performance as students get further into the CS curriculum. Surprisingly, there was no indication that sense of belonging is predictive of retention in terms of persistence to the next CS course outside of the first course in our two-course CS1 sequence. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Computing Education.

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Competitive Enrollment Policies in Computing Departments Negatively Predict First-Year Students' Sense of Belonging, Self-Efficacy, and Perception of Department

Cited by 43 publications

References 21 publications

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

Sense of Belonging: The Intersectionality of Self-Identified Minority Status and Gender in Undergraduate Computer Science Students

A Longitudinal Evaluation of a Best Practices CS1

The Relationship Between Sense of Belonging and Student Outcomes in CS1 and Beyond

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