The Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP), through Targeted Infusion Projects, supports the development, implementation, and study of evidence-based innovative models and approaches for improving the preparation and success of HBCU undergraduate students so that they may pursue STEM graduate programs and/or careers. Morgan State University intends to enhance its computer science curriculum to effect improved student performance in programming. The project focuses its attention on two “key†computer courses as they serve as ‘gatekeeper’ courses and/or targeted programming courses. With a student population that is 84.5% from groups who are typically underrepresented in STEM fields, the project is poised to prepare larger numbers of computer scientists from those groups, who will be more competitive in the computer science industry. Successful execution of the project also promises to impact analogous programs at peer institutions.
The goals of this project are to: 1) infuse two distinct learning initiatives, programming-based problem-solving strategies and a programming tool usage workflow, into two CS programming courses at Morgan State University and evaluate the ability for CS majors, enrolled in these courses, to become proficient programmers based on these employed initiatives, and 2) conduct a 3-year longitudinal survey that captures information about the matriculation, confidence levels, developed skill-sets, and future/career aspirations of all CS majors at Morgan State University. To examine the impact of both initiatives, measures for evaluating psycho-social attributes, programming comprehension, programming task efficiency, and tool usability will be employed. Likewise, relative factors such as retention, GPA, and graduation rates will be evaluated. The potential contributions of this project are to 1) evaluate the effectiveness of both learning initiatives on student learning, and 2) show evidence that these practices can aid in the Computer Science majors’ ability to become proficient programmers.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
