ABSTRACT

This project aims to serve the national interest by promoting the development of professional behaviors among students in undergraduate computing courses. Traditional computing education imparts knowledge and skills, however professional behaviors such as persistence, self-directedness, and adaptability, are essential for success in the professional computing workforce. Employer surveys reveal that professional behaviors, or dispositions, are as important for success in the workplace as the knowledge and skills students develop in their academic programs of study. Although well-known evidence-based teaching and learning approaches for knowledge acquisition and skill development exist, no similar approaches have been developed to foster professional dispositions in computing education. In this project, faculty at four institutions plan to collaboratively study how to promote these behaviors among undergraduate computing students using exercises that ask students to explain how they have applied these behaviors in their coursework and how others have used these behaviors in real-life scenarios. The goal of this project is to develop, implement, and study the use of reflection exercises and vignettes to foster ten professional dispositions among undergraduate computing students.

The project team will build on its experiences and results from a previous study by: (1) developing and using vignettes; (2) targeting five additional dispositions such as meticulousness, inventiveness, and responsibility; (3) extending the study over four semesters; (4) incorporating a continuous cycle of improvement; and (5) given access to a larger data set, studying how dispositions affect groups underrepresented in computing. The use of vignettes will be evaluated in multiple contexts: public and private institutions, as well as liberal arts and professional studies. The study will use a mixed-methods quasi-experimental research design. During each semester of this two-year project, pre-survey, post-survey, reflection exercises, and vignettes will be administered online. The team will disseminate the evaluation results, reflection exercises, a suite of fifty vignettes, and guidelines for designing and using reflection exercises and vignettes among computing educators and researchers through peer-reviewed venues. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program 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.

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