Recent work has identified a mismatch between instructor expectations of students' mastery of prerequisite course content and their actual ability. This invites the question of why this mismatch exists. We first examined grades in prerequisite courses and found they meaningfully correlated with performance on an assessment testing their knowledge of prerequisite material. In addition, we found neither taking alternatives to the primary identified prerequisites nor the delay between taking prerequisite courses and the follow-on course meaningfully impacts performance. Second, we confirmed that prerequisite course grades are significantly correlated with the grade in the follow-on course-confirming that the grades in the previous courses convey some information about student understanding of those topics. Perhaps surprisingly, we found that grades in courses outside computing were similarly correlated as those courses inside computing, suggesting that underlying factors such as general study skills may be as important as the domain-specific knowledge itself.

Previous work has found that recent computer science graduates often experience difficulty transitioning into their new roles in industry due to a significant gap between their academic experiences and industry's expectations. Although multiple studies have identified the views of students and members of industry on the value of a CS degree as preparation for industry, the faculty perspective on this topic remains unclear. Understanding these views could shed light on why the academia-industry gap has persisted despite the attention. This study identified faculty views on the goals of an undergraduate education and a CS major, focusing on preparation for careers in industry. In order to identify a spectrum of faculty views, we interviewed 14 faculty from a variety of backgrounds across three institutions. A phenomenographic analysis of the transcripts reveals that many faculty believe that industry preparation is an important programmatic goal, yet they encounter significant resource obstacles to achieving that goal.

Students' sense of belonging has been found to be connected to student retention in higher education. In computing education, prior studies suggest that a hostile culture and a feeling of nonbelonging can lead women, Black, Latinx, Native American, and Pacific Islander students to drop out of the computing field at a disproportionately high rate. Yet, we know relatively little about how computing students' sense of belonging presents and evolves (if at all) through their college courses, particularly in courses beyond the introductory level, and little is known about how sense of belonging impacts student outcomes in computing. In an extension of a previous study, we examined students' sense of belonging in six early undergraduate computer science courses across three consecutive quarters at a large research-intensive institution in North America. We found that women and first generation students have a lower incoming sense of belonging across all courses. When exploring sense of belonging's tie to student outcomes we found that lower sense of belonging was correlated with negative course outcomes in terms of pass rates and course performance. We also found that it is less tied to student performance as students get further into the CS curriculum. Surprisingly, there was no indication that sense of belonging is predictive of retention in terms of persistence to the next CS course outside of the first course in our two-course CS1 sequence. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Computing Education.

No abstract

Although elements of the academia-industry gap have been studied extensively, these studies have mostly ignored the primary stakeholder for changing academia: faculty. Building on a recent qualitative study that revealed a wide range of faculty views on the gap, this study quantitatively examines faculty views through a survey on the goals of CS education, how CS programs should address the academia-industry gap, and which barriers prevent adoption of remedies. Analysis of the 249 responses reveals that a majority of faculty share common goals in supporting student preparation for a career in industry. Moreover, faculty strongly view their own institutions as the prime party responsible for student preparation for careers in both academia and industry. We also find that whereas faculty are generally in agreement on what could be improved to provide students with better industry preparation, some reported far greater barriers to implementing those improvements than others.