Alex Lishinski

Self-efficacy is important for success in computing courses, but best practices for how computing instructors can support students' self-efficacy development are still a matter of ongoing development. CS students' judgments about their own abilities are often very self-critical and disagree with the ways that experts in CS would measure competency. Self-assessment scaffolding has been observed to improve learning outcomes and self-efficacy in various domains. However, these practices are not well known in CS education research, and there is a lack of empirically-based guidance about how to implement them. This project is devoted to developing a self-assessment scaffolding intervention for CS1 that is effective, efficient to implement, and usable for students. Improving pedagogical practices in introductory courses (CS1) will help improve the outcomes for everyone, but approaches targeting self-efficacy may particularly benefit students from minoritized groups in CS, such as women and students of color.

This poster describes a research project that is in the preliminary stages, working to develop a pedagogical intervention based on prior education research. Self-efficacy is known to be an important factor for success in computing. What is less known is how computing instructors can support students on this dimension. Prior research has suggested that self-assessment scaffolding can benefit students' self-efficacy and learning outcomes, so we are developing a pedagogical intervention to that end.

Teachers participate in professional development activities to enhance their pedagogical knowledge and share best practices—and the increasing role of technologies in education, including social media, is shifting how this professional development occurs. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to further consider the role of social media for professional learning. Using intensive longitudinal methods, we investigated 14 teachers’ use of social media both before and during the pandemic (n = 386 total responses). We found some general patterns in social media platforms uptake and their purposes, but teachers’ use of social media was largely idiosyncratic. Also, teachers demonstrated notable shifts in social media use after the pandemic started; multi-level models indicated that teachers were more likely to use social media to connect and share, especially, compared to before the pandemic. Higher levels of COVID-related stress were also associated with more use of social media for emotional and community benefits.

Teachers participate in professional learning activities to enhance their pedagogical knowledge and share best practices—and the increasing role of technologies in education, including social media, is shifting how this professional learning occurs. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to consider the role of social media for professional learning. Using intensive longitudinal methods, we repeatedly surveyed 14 teachers’ use of social media both before and during the pandemic (N = 386 total responses). We found patterns in social media platforms uptake and their purposes, but teachers’ use of social media was largely idiosyncratic. Also, teachers demonstrated notable shifts in social media use after the pandemic started; multilevel models indicated that teachers were more likely to use social media to connect and share, especially, as well as learn and follow, compared with before the pandemic. Higher levels of COVID-19-related family stress were also associated with more use of social media to find materials.