NSF Supports Diversity in Computing
September 19, 2018Share story
Colleen Lewis is working to improve the culture of computer science across computer science departments in the U.S. One aspect of that work is developing education practices that support students from groups that are underrepresented in computing.
A new partnership between two existing NSF-funded infrastructures鈥攖he Computing Research Association鈥檚 Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CRA CERP) and CSTeachingTips.org鈥攁ims to connect student-level data with department-level education practices to provide the computing community with empirically grounded best practices that support efforts for broadening participation in computing.
Lewis, the McGregor-Girand Associate Professor of Computer Science, worked with over 30 undergraduate researchers to develop CSTeachingTips.org, a platform for documenting and disseminating effective teaching practices. The new project combines CERP鈥檚 data collection infrastructure and CSTeachingTips鈥� expertise in disseminating computing education practices.
Student data on learning experiences and persistence in computing career paths is collected through an existing CERP survey completed by over 7,000 undergraduate students per year.
Lewis believes the research 鈥渃ould identify which of the things we do at Harvey Mudd are most correlated with success in broadening participation in computing,鈥� she says.
To disseminate results of the research to the wider computing community, Lewis intends to visit computer science departments at several colleges to encourage them to use the current best practices. She鈥檒l also promote the best practices via CSTeachingTips.org.
The project, 鈥淒eveloping Evidence-based Best Practices for Broadening Participation in Computing Education,鈥� will last five years and provide opportunities for student involvement. 鈥淪tudents in my CS Education Research Seminar (CS106) will be pitching research projects using the data,鈥� Lewis says. 鈥淗opefully, I鈥檒l recruit some of them to continue on in the spring to work on the project and test the hypotheses they propose in their research project pitches.鈥�