2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 208: Breaking Through the Obstacles: Strategies and Support Helping Students Succeed in Computer Science

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

The field of computer science remains highly skewed toward White and Asian males at institutions of higher education and the workforce. The demographic characteristics of students in Computer Science (CS) nationwide are typically not representative of the general population. The overarching goal of this NSF project is to explore when and to which degrees these imbalances are greatest and how the imbalances may influence students’ opportunities to enter and paths throughout CS undergraduate programs. This poster/paper will present a portion of our findings obtained during a pilot qualitative study related to strategies and support for overcoming obstacles through a variety of actions (policies, programs, pedagogy) towards student success. The pilot was run in three different institutions of higher education in California and is designed to dive into the students’ lived experiences describing their pathways to and through the CS degree.
We designed the pilot study to validate our study instrument, namely, to test our protocol and questions. The pilot was running until we reached saturation when we did not obtain any new data from the introduction of the new participants, resulting in a total of seven participants. The pilot study used a population of convenience: a limited population of students who are soon to be graduated or graduated. Three of the participants self-identified as women and four as men. We also explored whether focus groups or individual interviews provided the most effective means for elucidating meaningful data. We organized one focus group (all women) and four individual interviews (men). The focus group provided a comfortable environment and might have facilitated synergistic outcomes through participant interaction.
Our findings illustrate lived experiences and brought several issues to light. Positive experiences included engaging pedagogy, prior CS experiences, a summer bridge program, a research experience, and a feeling of belonging. Negative experiences included dry pedagogy, competitive situations, cliques being formed, and challenging team dynamics. The collaborative work environment showed positive and negative aspects, pointing to the need for a well-defined collaboration policy. Collaboration and team dynamics influenced social engagement and a sense of belonging that has been known to significantly increase success, retention, and graduation rates. We noticed the differences in the level of preparedness and its influence on the students’ journey. We also explored the influence of soft skills, outlook, scholarly attributes, and support on the perception of the journey through the program. Although our participants have reported that they did not perceive any overt sexism or racism, we present the findings correlated with gender and race/ethnicity.
Our future work will include possible fine-tuning of the protocol to discuss demographics and reflect upon the situations where the students might feel minoritized. Additionally, the students in the future study will be purposefully selected to examine experiences at multiple stages of the major with different support and preparation for a CS major (SES and first-generation status), or the students who are at risk of dropping out or who have already dropped out as they may reveal reasons and circumstances for attrition.

Authors

Dr. Jelena Trajkovic California State University, Long Beach [biography]

Jelena Trajkovic received her Ph.D. (2009) and MS (2003) in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine, and a Dipl. Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Belgrade, Serbia (2000). She was a ReSMiQ Postdoctoral Scholar at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal (2010-2012), an Assistant Professor (2012-2018), and an Affiliate Assistant Professor appointment (2018-2020) in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Concordia University in Montreal. She joined California State University Long Beach (CSULB) in 2018 where she is an Associate Professor at the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at the College of Engineering.
Her research interests are in domains of network-on-chip, silicon photonics, multicore systems, parallel applications, and avionics systems. At CSULB she expanded her research interests to computing and engineering education and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Dr Trajkovic's work has been funded by National Science Foundation and the Center for Inclusive Computing. Her work was recognized by three Best Paper Awards and the Teaching Excellence Award at Concordia University.
Dr. Lisa M Martin-Hansen California State University, Long Beach [biography]

Lisa Martin-Hansen received her Ph.D. (2001) and MS (1998) in science education from the University of Iowa and her undergraduate degree from the University of Northern Iowa in Elementary/Middle School Education with concentration in earth sciences. She joined California State University Long Beach in 2013 (previously at Georgia State University and Drake University) where she is Professor of Science Education in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics specializing in Curriculum and Instruction and nature of science.
Anna Bargagliotti Loyola Marymount University [biography]

Anna Bargagliotti is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University. Her work focuses on statistics education, data visualizations, statistical modeling, and nonparametric statistics. She has received over 7 million dollars in funding to further her work and she has published over 50 papers. Dr. Bargagliotti received her undergraduate degree in mathematics and economics from UC Santa Barbara in 2000, Masters degree in statistics in 2008 from UCLA, and Ph.D. in mathematics in 2008 from UC Irvine.
Dr. Christine Alvarado University of California, San Diego [biography]

Christine Alvarado is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at the University of California, San Diego; she is also a Teaching Professor and holds the Paul R. Kube Chair in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department. Her work designing curriculum and programs to make computing and computing education more accessible and appealing has been funded by the National Science Foundation, philanthropic and industry partners Dr. Alvarado received her undergraduate degree in computer science from Dartmouth in 1998, and Masters and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from MIT in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
Cassandra M Guarino University of California, Riverside [biography]

Cassandra Guarino is Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of California Riverside. She obtained her PhD in the Economics of Education from Stanford University in 1999 with an emphasis on labor economics, and has held prior positions as an economist at the Rand Corporation and on the faculties of Michigan State and Indiana Universities. Her research focuses on educational equity, student outcomes, and issues in which health and education are linked. She has taught courses in education policy, economics of education, value-added, policy analysis, quantitative research methods, school choice, and microeconomics.
Janel Ancayan California State University, Long Beach [biography]

Janel Ancayan is a Master of Science Education Student (Informal Program Option) student at California State University, Long Beach.
Joseph Alex Chorbajian California State University, Long Beach [biography]

Joseph Chorbajian is a graduate researcher of computer science and computer science education at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). He completed his undergraduate degree in computer science at University of California, Irvine in 2022 and will receive his Master's degree in the same field at CSULB.
Kent Vi California State University, Long Beach [biography]

Kent Vi is a Chemistry and Physics teacher at Saddleback High School. He has also taught Exploring Computer Science at Environmental Charter High School with equity and inquiry in the forefront. He received his Bachelors (2014) in Chemistry and teaching credential at University of California, Irvine and is working on a Masters in Science Education at California State University Long Beach.

Download paper (1.82 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
Pre-College