Student Sense of Community Through an Introductory Computer Programming Course Sequence
Laura K. Alford, Amir Kamil, Andrew DeOrio · 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2020
An inclusive community is an important factor in growing and maintaining a diverse student body.In this paper, we measure changes in the sense of community among students as they progress through an introductory computing sequence.A five year program is aimed at increasing the enrollment and graduation rates of women and underrepresented minority (URM) students in computer science and engineering at a competitive public research institution.Three obstacles to diversity in computer science and computer engineering have been identified: stereotyped traits, perceived abilities, and learning environment.Identifying implicit bias and imposter syndrome as components of these obstacles, we include a series of class activities designed to lessen the impact of implicit bias and imposter syndrome on our students in large-enrollment introductory computer programming courses.One element of assessing the success of our program is to use entry and exit surveys to gauge the change in students' perceptions of their abilities and learning environment.Previously, we investigated the difference between men's and women's perceptions of their abilities and the learning environments in introductory computing courses.We found a statistically significant association between gender and perception of self-efficacy, but not in how those perceptions change over the course of the term.We then investigated the differences between underrepresented minority (URM) students' and non-URM students' perceptions of their abilities and the learning environments in introductory computing courses.We found no statistically significant differences between URM and non-URM students; however, both groups showed slight decreases in feelings of inclusion for the courses included in the study.To better understand these previous results, we need a more nuanced investigation of individual paths over time through the introductory computer programming sequence.Our research question is: How do students' sense of community change over time through an introductory computer programming sequence?Our data set is comprised of entry and exit survey data for five semesters of a three course introductory computing sequence, which yielded 259 complete responses.We measured changes in survey responses from individual students as they progressed from CS1 through CS2 to CS3.The survey data was analyzed using a mixed-effects linear model for repeated measures of questions on the student's sense of community in their undergraduate studies up to the point of when they took the survey.The data show that students in all groups report generally positive feelings for every survey questions, and that mean values are fairly consistent across groups.However, we did observe several statistically significant effects, indicating a change in sense of community and self-efficacy.Overall, students report a small but significant decrease over time in response to questions related to self-efficacy as they progress through the program.Women in particular show a stronger negative effect compared to men.URM students show small to medium negative effects for questions related to climate and inclusion as they make progress through the course sequence.These results indicate that we require further interventions to improve the sense of community among our students.