Talk by Allison Tew - A Progress Report on Measuring Students' Development of Expert-Like Attitudes about CS

TITLE:

A Progress Report on Measuring Students' Development of Expert-Like
Attitudes about CS

SPEAKER: Allison Elliott Tew, University of Washington

HOST: Steve Wolfman

LOCATION: ICICS/CS X836, 2366 Main Mall

DATE AND TIME: Wednesday, June 12, 10 am

ABSTRACT:

The Computing Attitudes Survey (CAS) is a newly designed, locally validated, instrument, adapted from the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey, for measuring novice to expert-like perceptions about computer science.  In this talk, I will present an overview of our research using an iterative design process  for the adaptation and validation, and then focus on our analysis of recently collected data.  This study examines how students develop expert-like attitudes and what effect an introductory course may have on that development.  I will conclude by discussing some preliminary results from a UBC-specific analysis and implications for future use.

BIO:

Dr. Allison Elliott Tew is currently a Post Doctoral Researcher in the Institute of Technology at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her research interests include computer science education, learning sciences and technologies, and software engineering education.  She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  She is an active member of the ACM, SIGCSE, and the American Educational Research Association.