Self-efficacy, Interest, and Belongingness – URM Students’ Momentary Experiences in CS1
Alex Lishinski, Sarah Narvaiz, Joshua M. Rosenberg
Abstract
Educational stakeholders want to understand and overcome the well-documented racial and gender disparities within computer science education. There are many factors that influence students’ participation, performance, and persistence in CS courses, including motivational and affective factors. Prior research in CS education has documented the influence of these factors on students’ CS outcomes generally, and on URM students in particular. What has been less investigated, is how students’ motivational and affective experiences in CS develop and evolve from moment to moment, particularly for URM students. To better understand how these experiences develop, this paper presents the results of a study using intensive longitudinal methods which examined the differences in momentary experiences between racially underrepresented students and their represented peers in undergraduate introductory computer science courses. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), we solicited responses on students’ momentary self-efficacy, interest, and affective experiences 8-18 times in each of two semesters from a total of 110 CS students, of which 19 identified as racially underrepresented.