2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Assessing Communication Skills Across Upper-Level CS Courses

Presented at Computers in Education Division (COED) Track 6.B

Computer Science courses demand commitment to not only a deep understanding of the course material but connections to other subfields of CS. We implemented a writing assignment and several formal group presentations for undergraduates in a Theory of Computing (ToC) course. This writing assignment included creating a research-style paper solving ToC problems and anonymously refereeing other students' paper submissions.
In this paper we address the impact that such an assignment has on follow-on courses in our CS curriculum: a similar writing assignment in an Operating Systems (OS) course and formal presentations in a capstone course. We found that participation in ToC had no significant effect on the OS or capstone course's outcomes, but was a statistically significant predictor of performance on the final report in the capstone course. Additionally, we found that peer reviewing in ToC predicted OS writing performance and that the final ToC presentation was predictive of capstone's presentation scores. These results suggest that specific elements of prior instruction for technical communication can positively impact performance in subsequent upper-level CS courses.

Authors

Dr. Ryan Edward Dougherty United States Military Academy [biography]

Dr. Ryan Dougherty is an assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He earned his Ph.D. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science from Arizona State University. His research interests include theoretical Computer Science, evolutionary computing, combinatorial algorithms and Computer Science education. Dr. Dougherty spent a year as a visiting assistant professor at Colgate University. He has also been on several program committees in Computer Science education.
Dr. Maria R. Ebling United States Military Academy [biography]

Maria R. Ebling is an assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She earned both a Ph.D. and M.S. degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College. Her research interest includes pervasive computing, the Internet of Things, and Computer Science education. Prior to joining the faculty of West Point, Dr. Ebling spent three years as the Chief Technology Officer at Medaptive Health and nearly 20 years at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Ebling is an ACM Distinguished Scientist.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on July 31, 2025

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