Computer Science and Computer Information Technology majors together: Analyzing factors impacting students' success in introductory programming

Why do so few women major in computer science (CS) or management information systems (MIS)? Are the reasons for women’s underrepresentation in these two disciplines the same? I will address these issues by reporting on my research on female and male undergraduates majoring in CS or MIS. I hypothesize that results from one area of information technology (IT), such as CS, do not necessarily generalize to other areas of IT, such as MIS. Structural barriers exist that keep women from advancement in IT careers (cf. Ahuja, 2002). However, an examination of these is beyond the scope of this article, which focuses on gender differences in IT students. In 2002 only 27.6% of U.S. Bachelor’s degrees in CS and 36.8% in MIS were conferred on women (U.S. Department of Education, 2002), limiting the number of women qualified to enter into the IT workforce. The problem of women’s under representation in IT is not limited to the U.S. Women are underrepresented in CS majors in other Western countries such as Canada (Gadalla, 2001), Germany (Huber, Reiff, Ben, & Schinzel, 2001), Norway (Berg, Gansmo, Hestflatt, Lie, Nordli, & Sorenson, 2002), and Ireland (MacKeogh, 2003). IT cannot afford to underutilize such a valuable and significant part of the workforce. Increasing the representation of women is imperative because “greater diversity among those who create computing technology ensures that those technologies are relevant to and usable by a wider range of people” (Roberts, 2003).

This paper describes a project we have recently started for automating introductory computer science courses. Why should these courses be automated? At the University of Illinois there are currently about 2000 students per semester taking various introductory programming courses: engineers, social scientists, teachers, physical scientists, computer science majors, etc., each group having its own particular needs. These courses are taught in sections of about 100 students each, with an additional hour of discussion in groups of about 20 students. In our experience it is very difficult to organize these courses in such a way that students both learn something and are happy with the material presented. The main difficulty seems to come from the fact that a beginning programmer needs a lot of individual help, and this cannot be provided in large sections. We are now convinced that these courses cannot be improved within the current setup, and since enrollments in these courses are increasing, the situation is bound to grow worse unless something new is tried. We assume that the situation we have described is typical of many large universities.

At the University of Tennessee at Martin (UTM), freshman computer science majors were being successful in their first quarter in computer science, but many majors were not completing the year sequence (Programming Concepts and Problem Solving I, II, and III). This study describes a freshman studies program that helps increase student retention in the first computer science course.Two populations were used in this study. The first population (Group A) consisted of 25 freshman computer science majors (16 men and 9 women) enrolled Fall Quarter 85 in freshman orientation General Studies GS1000 for one quarter hour credit. The second population (Group B) consisted of 17 freshman computer science majors (12 men and 5 women) enrolled the Fall Quarter 86 in freshman orientation General Studies GS1001 for two quarter hours credit. Both groups were placed in the first course in computer science using the cutting scores ACT English > 17 or 0.78 (ACT English) + 0.49 (UTM Math Placement) > 33. Both Groups A and B had an average ACT English score of 20 and an average UTM Math Placement score of 55. Each quarter during the freshman year, the computer science major enrolls in calculus (4 hrs.), Programming Concepts and Problem Solving (3 hrs.), a laboratory science (4 hrs.), English (3 hrs.), and a humanities course (3 hrs.).Group A was offered a freshman orientation program that involved a pass/fail one quarter hour credit GS1000 which met one hour each day during freshman studies week. Each section consisted of twenty-five heterogeneously grouped students. The course content was review of study skills. Group B was offered a freshman orientation program that involved a pass/fail two quarter hour credit GS1001 which met one hour each day during freshman studies week, plus one hour each week during the first quarter. Each section consisted of only students of a particular major (computer science) and was taught by a faculty member of that department. The topics of this course consisted of a review of study skills, discussions of student problems, special academic speakers, field trips to professional sites, cultural events, meetings with deans and department heads, and a follow-up on study skills. In the meeting before the final exam week, the faculty member dealt specifically with suggestions on preparing for finals.Groups A and B were enrolled in the same first computer science sequence (Programming Concepts and Problem Solving I, II, and III) their freshman year. Both groups had the same instructors, text (Introduction to Computing and Computer Science with Pascal by H. Walker), and course syllabus for this sequence. Both groups carried the same academic course load their freshman year. However, in Group A only 20% (5 out of 25) of the students completed the first computer science sequence with a grade of C or better, while in Group B 41% (7 out of 17) completed the same sequence with a grade of C or better. Student retention is achieved through the students' integration into the academic and social systems of the college by two factors: (1) faculty-student interaction and (2) peer-group interaction. Although the population of this study was small, I believe GS1001 provides one way of increasing student retention in computer science.

Several computer science education studies show that it is important when teaching introductory computer programming to teach the fundamental skills needed to learn programming in a sequenced order. These skills are reading code, writing code, interpreting programming templates, and applying programming templates to specific problems. However, most introductory programming courses, and programming textbooks, often interleave these skills so that writing code may be introduced before reading code and using templates to solve problems may be introduced before students are adequately taught how to interpret those templates. This poster will present a curriculum for teaching introductory C++ programming to Computer Science majors that follows the proper sequencing of skills. Examples of reading code using variable tracing problems are demonstrated, along with example problems in writing code. These examples will highlight several programming constructs including if statements, loops, and functions. Several programming templates are shown, as well as sample problems that require the student to recognize that the problem has an associated template and then be able to apply that template to solving the problem. The templates demonstrated in the poster include variable swapping, input one - process one, accumulate values until done, and processing all elements of an array.

Numerical simulation using high performance computing has become a key technology for many scientific disciplines. Consequently, high performance computing courses constitute an essential component within the undergraduate and graduate programs in Computational Engineering at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. These courses are also offered as optional courses in other degree programs, such as for majors in computer science.

Research Full Paper - Computer Science majors lack gender diversity in Brasília, Brazil. Women are an underrepresented minority group in these majors. At the University of Brasilia, one of the top ten universities in Brazil, female undergraduate students account for less than 15% of the students in the Department of Computer Science. In an effort to understand the lack of interest in Computer Science majors among women, this paper addresses the following research questions: 1)Are female students in high school aware that Computer Science majors are predominantly male? 2)Are families of girls from Brasília supportive of their enrolment in Computer Science majors? 3)Do girls from Brasília think that Computer Science majors need a lot of Math? 4)Do female students in high school think that it is difficult to get a job in the field of Computing, with a good salary, and sufficient leisure time? and 5)Which factors influence a female student's choice of a Computer Science major? We devised a questionnaire and applied it to female students in middle and high school on two occasions, in October 2011 (1391 responses) and in July 2019 (429 responses). This paper presents the analysis of the data from the responses, which indicates that the girls' perceptions of Computing have not changed in those years.

Computer science is a fast-growing field in today’s digitized age, and working in this industry often requires creativity and innovative thought. An issue within computer science education, however, is that large introductory programming courses often involve little opportunity for creative thinking within coursework. The undergraduate introductory programming course (CS1) is notorious for its poor student performance and retention rates across multiple institutions. Integrating opportunities for creative thinking may help combat this issue by adding a personal touch to course content, which could allow beginner CS students to better relate to the abstract world of programming. Research on the role of creativity in computer science education (CSE) is an interesting area with a lot of room for exploration due to the complexity of the phenomenon of creativity as well as the CSE research field being fairly new compared to some other education fields where this topic has been more closely explored.To contribute to this area of research, this article provides a literature review exploring the concept of creativity as relevant to computer science education and CS1 in particular. Based on the review of the literature, we conclude creativity is an essential component to computer science, and the type of creativity that computer science requires is in fact, a teachable skill through the use of various tools and strategies. These strategies include the integration of open-ended assignments, large collaborative projects, learning by teaching, multimedia projects, small creative computational exercises, game development projects, digitally produced art, robotics, digital story-telling, music manipulation, and project-based learning. Research on each of these strategies and their effects on student experiences within CS1 is discussed in this review. Last, six main components of creativity-enhancing activities are identified based on the studies about incorporating creativity into CS1. These components are as follows: Collaboration, Relevance, Autonomy, Ownership, Hands-On Learning, and Visual Feedback. The purpose of this article is to contribute to computer science educators’ understanding of how creativity is best understood in the context of computer science education and explore practical applications of creativity theory in CS1 classrooms. This is an important collection of information for restructuring aspects of future introductory programming courses in creative, innovative ways that benefit student learning.

There has been much debate in the past few years about the appropriate mathematics requirements for an undergraduate computer science major. The discussion has focused primarily on two issues: (1) the underlying mathematical content of computer science courses and (2) the content of mathematics courses which would serve as appropriate cognate requirements for computer science major programs. While this discussion has been helpful, it has been too narrowly focused--it has not started from an understanding of the relationship between the disciplines of mathematics and computer science, but rather has sought to identify mathematical prerequisites that computer science majors need in order to take existing computer science courses. This paper is a small step in seeking to apply an understanding of the relationship between the disciplines of mathematics and computer science to the undergraduate computer science curriculum.

Based on the perspective of the integration of specialization and innovation, in order to improve students' innovative practical abilities, this paper innovates the talent cultivation mode of computer science and technology majors, proposes the "three carriers" co creation progressive talent cultivation mode, optimizes the curriculum system of specialization and innovation integration, scientific research and education projects, and scientific and technological innovation activities as carriers, and jointly cultivates students' innovative practical abilities at the hierarchical level of school enterprise and teacher-student collaboration. At the same time, from the curriculum system propose relevant strategies in terms of innovative practice platforms, diverse assessment standards for innovative talents, etc., to promote the cultivation of innovative applied talents in computer science and technology majors.

This full research paper studies the correlation of self-efficacy in computer science as well as learning and social skills with students' academic performance and their emotions in collaborative learning environments. Self-efficacy is an essential part of social cognitive theory and provides the foundation for analyzing human thoughts, motivations, and actions. Studies show that students' successful performance and accomplishment are directly affected by the level of self-efficacy. Therefore, analyzing self-efficacy in engineering education is important since it can impact the learning process in academic settings as well as provide a metric to track for improvement. Social cognitive theories also emphasize that students' interaction with each other affects their learning process and how they perform in educational settings. In previous work [5], we analyzed students' conversations in low-stake teams in an introductory programming course (CS1) and observed a strong positive correlation between students' positive emotions while interacting with each other with their performance in the course. In this study, we focus on the correlation of self-efficacy with learner's emotion and performance. We measure students' self-efficacy with a standard instrument called "Student Attitudes Toward STEM (S-STEM) Survey". For this purpose, we asked the participants to self-report on a 5-point Likert-scaled survey including 20 questions. These 20 questions are grouped into 2 main categories of computer science and learning/social skills. Students' emotions were extracted from their speeches in teams by applying natural language processing (NLP) methods. The result of data analysis shows a statistically significant correlation between overall self-efficacy and performance in the course and positive emotions during the teamwork. We further investigate which category of self-efficacy questions most correlate with students' performance. The result shows self-efficacy in interpersonal skills and learning ability most impact students' performance.

Graduation rates are generally low among undergraduate Computer Science (CS) majors, so we are motivated to employ flipped classroom model at CSUB to improve 4-year graduation rates. There is a plethora of literature supporting improved information retention using the flipped classroom model. However, its impact on upper-division core CS courses has been understudied. An active learning environment using Just-in-Time-Teaching (JiTT), pair instruction, and computational thinking has been implemented in this study. This flipped classroom model was applied to two upper-division CS courses, Computer Architecture II and Artificial Intelligence. A year-long study measured the impact on performance through surveys, performance on group activities, and class performance such as test scores, with comparison to a control population (non-flipped classroom class) normalized for a specific instructor. An increased student performance and ultimately better graduation rates among the 40 flipped classroom model students is anticipated.

One of the most important factors that increase student's preoccupation towards entrepreneurship is the way they are inspired by university studies to take action in this direction. This exploratory research aims at determining how student's previous experience in using educational platforms helps them when deciding to become an entrepreneur. The authors analyze how able are students and graduates of University Politehnica of Bucharest to recognize business opportunities, what their motivations would be in starting their own company and also if they feel the university environment and educational program supports them. Based on students' perception of how the university environment with the curriculum design, teaching methods, and other facilities the authors want to find ways in order to improve the entrepreneurial preoccupation towards students. For this exploratory study, the authors used mixed method research, and the data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The authors gathered data from students and graduates of three faculties in University Politehnica of Bucharest in order to see the differences that come from the curricula, with majors in Computer Science, Engineering, and Entrepreneurship. Data were interpreted using SPSS Modeller and the results validated. The recommendations the authors make are useful both for the academia but also for the business development in Romania because of the investigation of what students need in order to start their own business in terms of education and support within the universities. One major result was that even if students from faculties where innovation is highly supported like Information Technology/ Computer Science have many ideas and would like to start a business, they are not doing so because they lack entrepreneurial education. On the other hand, students from faculties with several economic disciplines would like to start a business but are not supported and educated enough to come up with innovative products. In conclusion, the paper presents solutions for both situations in order to increase students’ entrepreneurial preoccupation.

Students often find that learning to program is hard. Introductory programming courses have high drop-out rates and students do not learn to program well. This paper presents experiences from three educational institutions where introductory programming courses were improved by adopting Python as the first programming language and roles of variables as an aid in understanding program behavior. As a result of these changes, students were able to write working code from the very beginning, they found programming easy and interesting, they passed exams with good grades, and drop-out rates were low. Students became interested in programming and some of them even changed their personal study plan to include more of programming and computer science.

Women made significant contributions to the beginning of the computing revolution. For example, Ada Byron Lovelace helped write the first subroutine, the women of the ENIAC age programmed the first computer during World War II, and Admiral Grace Hopper wrote the first compiler. While there have been female pioneers in the field, today men dominate the world of information technology (Riemenschneider, Armstrong, Allen, & Reid, 2004). Gürer and Camp (2002) report that many science fields hold women in low esteem, and attempt to reject them. Moreover, women are actually declining as part of the technology workforce: they made up 41% of the information technology workforce in 1996, but in 2002 that proportion was down to 35% (Cockburn, 1999). Furthermore, the number of female university students currently studying information technology and computer science will not lead to an increase of females in the profession: in 2002, only 28% of all degrees in computer and information sciences went to women (NCES, 2003); in 2003, only 19% of computer science students were female (Wilson, 2003) and only 28% of the undergraduate students in information science were female (Saye & Wisser, 2004). In a time where women make up the majority of university students (NCES, 2003), why is information technology seeing the opposite trend (Zeldin & Pajares, 2000)? There are a number of theories as to why so few women have chosen to pursue a career in technology (Acker, Barry, & Esseveld, 1990; Cooper & Robinson, 1985; Wilson, 2003; Zeldin & Pajares, 2000). Furthermore, nearly all studies on the subject have been done in the United States (Irani, 2004; Lips, 2004; Wilson, 2003) while only one study cited here explored the gender gap among university students at the University of Hong Kong (Huang, Ring, Toich, & Torres, 1998). A number of feminist researchers believe that science (including technology) has a language that is masculine in nature (Acker et al., 1990). Furthermore, since our society understands gender as binary—that is, what is masculine is not feminine and vice versa—the very nature of science leaves women out. Once women get into the IT world, they face issues of personality and confidence that differ by gender. One theory, to be explored in depth here, is that women enrolled in introductory programming courses have less confidence in themselves than do their male counterparts and that the confidence level of female students decreases significantly between secondary and post-secondary education (Lips, 2004). In addition to being shaped by their comparisons of their performance with the performance of their male peers, women’s self-confidence is likely influenced by their experience of stress in their technology-oriented courses. These influences, combined with inaccurate views of IT careers, are influential in whether or not college students decide to work towards an IT-related major or choose another discipline all together (Irani, 2004; Zeldin & Pajares, 2000).

Computer science (CS) is defined in wikipedia as a branch of human knowledge “relating to computation, ranging from abstract analysis of algorithms and formal grammars, to subjects like programming languages, software, and computer hardware” (Computer Science, 2005). Computer science emerged as a distinct field in the 1940s and 1950s with the development of the first electronic digital computers. To limit computer science to just computer use or its knowledge bodies, however, is reductive; CS is embedded in a complex, unquantifiable cultural context, including socio-economic and gendering practice. Computer hardware and software are designed to complement and supplement human activity and processes such as warfare, industrial applications, information management, including education, the Internet, a knowledge commons, and most recently biotechnology. Although CS is typically considered neutral and scientific, its episteme and practice is androcentric or male centered, often to the exclusion of females (Herbst, 2002). Female attributes have not typically been associated with computer science or computers. Although there is general agreement that women are as intellectually capable as men in CS, the fact remains that women today do not have equal participation in CS majors, CS engineering, programming, software design, Web site construction, or computer repair. (Jepson & Perl, 2002). In the technetronic 21st century, when computers are becoming standard for education and in symbolic analytic jobs, women’s enrollment in CS has declined, and many women do not feel confident using computers for more than e-mail transmissions, e-commerce, and social interaction in forums or newsgroups. Women who do not have knowledge or confidence in their abilities to work in CS not only have unrealized potentials in CS but also are left out of employment activities. Reasons for gendering in CS are complex and debated. Socialization, overt and tacit discrimination, and epistemological plurality are three dominant explanations. CS industries, educators, cognitive scientists, parents, and women professionals in CS are some of the groups currently working to attain gender equity in CS.