Computer Science Problem Solving Course
Margaret Ellis · 2019
Solving problems in various current subfields of computer science improves student motivation and helps level the playing field for students who are less-likely to be exposed to such topics and tools outside of their coursework. The importance of student mindset is well studied in education, confident students who find course material useful and interesting are likely to be motivated and perform well. For several decades computer science educators have recognized the need for computer science students to enhance and practice their problem-solving skills. More recently, computer science educators have become attentive to barriers to student success, particularly barriers that impact students from groups that are underrepresented in the field. Students with more computing experience outside of their college coursework, such as high school coursework or extracurricular computing activities, have an advantage and the students who lack such experience are likely to be intimidated in addition to less skilled. This updated version of a Computer Science Problem Solving course still addresses the long-recognized need for undergraduates to improve metacognitive and problem-solving skills, but also improves student motivation and engagement by using current computer science tools and demystifying potentially intimidating topics such as version control, security, command line tools, web development and machine learning. In this poster the author reports on the philosophy and design of a newly updated Computer Science Problem Solving course for computer science majors and presents preliminary data regarding student mindset, metacognition and computing experience outside of coursework.