| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | June 16, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 16, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 2021330 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Huihui Wang
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $174,938.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $174,938.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2601 WOLF VILLAGE WAY RALEIGH NC US 27695-0001 (919)515-2444 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Campus Box 7514 Raleigh NC US 27695-7001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | IUSE |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
This project aims to serve the national interest in high-quality STEM education by studying an intervention designed to improve persistence of women in computer science. Engaging all people in learning about STEM, particularly computer science, is important for innovation, global competitiveness, and preparation for future careers that increasingly rely on computing. Women occupy just 28% of STEM jobs and account for only 17% of computer science majors and 21% of engineering majors. These differences in career choices arise partially from gender differences in self-assessment of STEM ability. This project will test whether educational institutions can use a simple intervention to increase the persistence of women in computer science. This intervention consists of email messages to students in introductory computer science courses. The messages contain contextual information about the student?s performance in class and encouragement regarding their effort and potential. For example, a message might reveal that the student is a top performer in the course and suggest that the student should explore getting involved in undergraduate computer science research. A pilot study found that changing the wording of a single email could increase women's intentions to stay in computer science by 18%. This project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on a larger scale, and determine how to maximize its efficacy. If successful, the project will provide educational institutions with a simple, easily implemented tool to increase the number of women in computer science fields. This intervention could have positive effects on other groups that face negative stereotypes about their intellectual capacity and ability to succeed in computer sciences, and might be applicable to other STEM disciplines, as well.
This project will use both a field experiment and an online experiment to test the intervention. The field experiment will be conducted across all the introductory computer science courses at a large research-based university. Multivariate analysis will be conducted to determine both the immediate and longitudinal effects of the intervention on self-assessed computer science ability and on persistence in computer science. Qualitative interviews will be conducted with some students in the field experiment to obtain nuanced data about students? experience with the intervention. The online experiment will use short programming activities and will explore which pieces of contextual information are most effective. This knowledge will be critical for crafting efficient messages that can be used at scale, and for determining methods (other than emails) through which institutions can boost students? self-assessment and persistence in computer science. Mediation analyses will be used in both the field and online experiments to illuminate the process through which the intervention impacts self-assessed computer science ability, and in turn, persistence. This research is expected to contribute to theoretical and practical knowledge of how institutions can intervene to promote gender equity and to increase knowledge about the social-psychological processes around self-assessments of ability and career choice that reproduce existing gender inequalities. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources Program, which 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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The U.S. is facing a shortage of professionals with computing skills, which has important implications for innovation, economic progress, and national security. Unfortunately, most efforts to increase the number of students with computing skills are resource intensive and only focus on students already in computing majors. Thus, there is a need for lightweight interventions that focus on students who have not already declared a major or minor in computing.
To fill this gap, we introduced and evaluated a lightweight career-choice intervention, which brought new students into the field of computing by targeting the career-choice process itself. This intervention focused on assuring top-performing students in non-major computing courses that they had the ability to succeed in computing. This is important because even high-performing students often have an inaccurate assessment of their own ability. This is especially true in computing courses that tend to have lower course grades, and where students often compare themselves unfavorably to peers with prior experience. These self-assessments of ability are notoriously inaccurate but have profound impacts on students’ career decisions. And unlike actual ability, it may be possible to improve students’ self-assessments with minimal effort by giving students contextual information about their performance. We tested our career-choice intervention using a randomized field experiment with top-performing students in introductory, non-major computing courses. We found evidence that our career-choice intervention increased students’ self-assessed ability, professional role confidence, belonging, and intentions to pursue a computing career. We also found evidence that our career-choice intervention doubled the likelihood that students: 1) stated that they will minor in computer science (CS), 2) took another computing course, and 3) applied to be a teaching assistant in a computing course. Lastly, we find evidence supporting our hypothesis for why the intervention worked: it improved students’ self-assessed ability, which in turn increased their intentions to pursue a computing career.
These results were echoed in qualitative interviews conducted with students at the end of the course. We interviewed 59 students about their experiences in computing, their self-assessments of computing ability, and their career choices. Of these students, 29 were in the intervention condition. Without any prompting or mention of the intervention, 11 of them (37.9%) mentioned the emails as being significant to them in some capacity, whether through impacting their self-assessment of ability, encouraging them to apply to be a TA, and/or impacting their decision to take another computing course. We consider the fact that so many students brought up the emails without prompting to be further evidence of the importance of the career-choice intervention, especially given how many emails students receive in a given semester.
In sum, this research finds evidence that a lightweight career-choice intervention can bring new students into computing, highlights the importance of self-assessments in the career-choice process, and demonstrates how the career-choice process can be targeted to broaden participation in computing and other STEM fields.
Last Modified: 10/16/2023
Modified by: Bita Akram
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