A SOCIO-TECHNICAL APPROACH TO UNDERGRADUATE COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENT DEVELOPMENT

Community interaction plays an important role in the development of a student. It ensures that students have a sense of belonging and increases their likelihood of matriculation. Community interaction also serves as a form of cognitive apprenticeship that facilitates the student’s professional development. It leads to learning of the jargon of the discipline as well as an understanding of the tacit ways of knowing and reasoning that are common to all successful members. Appropriate cognitive apprenticeship can only happen if students are aware of the technical and professional expectations of the computer Science (CS) community. In order to help both students and faculty assess and ensure the holistic development of students in their CS departments, a sociotechnical system that encourages community interaction and motivates students to co-regulate and self-regulate their technical as well as professional development is being investigated. The sociotechnical system investigates gamification as a persuasive technological approach that will motivate students to explore and achieve holistic development through increased informal learning and community interaction. Research is being conducted to understand, track and incorporate students’, as well as CS community stakeholders’ perceptions of holistic CS development. Research is also investigating the impact of a sociotechnical approach on CS students’, CS identity, CS self-efficacy, perception of community belonging, motivation, self-regulation and co-regulation.