Becoming experts: Measuring attitude development in introductory computer science

We have begun the process of examining how students per-ceive the field of computer science by employing a novice-to-expert continuum framework. As part of this exploration we have developed and are validating the Computing Attitudes Survey (CAS). In this study, our research focuses on how students develop expert-like attitudes and what effect an in-troductory course may have on that development. In partic-ular, we find that the CAS instrument can be used to detect pre/post attitude shifts after a single introductory course of instruction and that individual subpopulations show posi-tive attitude gains across gender, area of study and peda-gogy. Further, the CAS can also be used to identify significant pre/post attitude shifts among individual component factors, groupings of items on the survey that characterize different aspects of novice thought processes.