TY - GEN
T1 - A national study of undergraduate research experiences in computing
T2 - 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2018
AU - Rorrer, Audrey Smith
AU - Allen, Joseph
AU - Zuo, Huifang
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 1645846 and 1346847. The authors wish to also acknowledge the support of the Toolkit by the CISE REU PI Assessment Work Group of 2009-10, especially Teresa Dahlberg, Guy-Alain Amassou, Chris Aberson.
Funding Information:
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has formally supported undergraduate research programs to enhance student education since 1953 and began the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in 1986 [16]. The NSF sponsors approximately 700 REU programs for undergraduate research project sites with 7,000 college student participants in scientific disciplines at US universities each year, and 60-80 site within the CISE domain (800 students). Many of these programs seek to increase student retention and to encourage students to pursue graduate education [1, 22, 28]. In a study of computer science faculty regarding undergraduate research experiences, Matzen and Alrifai [24] found that REU programs share similar objectives of developing student research skills, preparation for graduate school and professional development. While REU sites share common goals, each site has unique research project objectives. A clear challenge in evaluating program outcomes in the computing domain is balancing the need for individual site context with the need for broader, generalizable program impact [13,26] that is not conflated with other scientific domains [4].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2018/2/21
Y1 - 2018/2/21
N2 - In this paper, we describe a large-scale, long-term study of a National Science Foundation undergraduate research program via the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Evaluation Toolkit project. The overarching research questions are: what attitudinal shifts occur for undergraduate research experience student participants, and do experience perceptions differ based upon student demographics? Results across two cohort years showed statistically significant gains for several key program level outcomes. However, intent to go to graduate school decreased in both cohorts. Gender and ethnicity differences were observed. Women and underrepresented minority group students had significantly higher scores for several factors. These findings are discussed in context of culturally relevant pedagogy for undergraduate research programs. This study is unique in its scale and scope, providing a depiction of student outcomes across multiple cohorts of a national sample including over 58 computing research sites and more than 900 undergraduate students.
AB - In this paper, we describe a large-scale, long-term study of a National Science Foundation undergraduate research program via the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Evaluation Toolkit project. The overarching research questions are: what attitudinal shifts occur for undergraduate research experience student participants, and do experience perceptions differ based upon student demographics? Results across two cohort years showed statistically significant gains for several key program level outcomes. However, intent to go to graduate school decreased in both cohorts. Gender and ethnicity differences were observed. Women and underrepresented minority group students had significantly higher scores for several factors. These findings are discussed in context of culturally relevant pedagogy for undergraduate research programs. This study is unique in its scale and scope, providing a depiction of student outcomes across multiple cohorts of a national sample including over 58 computing research sites and more than 900 undergraduate students.
KW - Computing education
KW - Culturally relevant pedagogy
KW - Gender
KW - Undergraduate research experiences
KW - Underrepresented minority
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046040069&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85046040069&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3159450.3159510
DO - 10.1145/3159450.3159510
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85046040069
T3 - SIGCSE 2018 - Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
SP - 604
EP - 609
BT - SIGCSE 2018 - Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 21 February 2018 through 24 February 2018
ER -