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Computing is not a rock band: student understanding of the computing disciplines

Published: 02 October 2013 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports the initial findings of a multi-year study that is surveying major and non-major students' understanding of the different computing disciplines. This study is based on work originally conducted by Courte and Bishop-Clark from 2009 [7] and then repeated by Battig and Shariq in 2011 [3], but which uses a broadened study instrument that provided additional forms of analysis. Data was collected from 199 students from a single institution who were computer science, information systems/information technology and non-major students taking a variety of introductory computing courses. Results show that undergraduate computing students are more likely to rate tasks as being better fits to computer disciplines than are their non-major (NM) peers. Uncertainty among respondents did play a large role in the results and is discussed alongside implications for teaching and further research.

References

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGITE '13: Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGITE conference on Information technology education
    October 2013
    220 pages
    ISBN:9781450322393
    DOI:10.1145/2512276
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 02 October 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. computer engineering
    2. computer science
    3. information systems
    4. information technology
    5. software engineering

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    SIGITE/RIIT'13
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    SIGITE/RIIT'13: SIGITE/RIIT 2013
    October 10 - 12, 2013
    Florida, Orlando, USA

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    SIGITE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 70 submissions, 40%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 176 of 429 submissions, 41%

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)Board 155: Computing Faculty Introducing Secondary Students to Differences in Computing Fields (Work in Progress)2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings10.18260/1-2--46716Online publication date: Jun-2024
    • (2024)Examining the Differences in Three Computing Fields with High School StudentsProceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/3686852.3687070(43-48)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2024
    • (2022)With a Rise in Computing Disciplines Comes a Greater Choice of Computing Degrees in Higher EducationProceedings of the 22nd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3564721.3565946(1-11)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2022
    • (2021)Understanding similarities and differences in students across first-year computing majors2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757695(1-8)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2021
    • (2016)Red Fish Blue FishProceedings of the 17th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/2978192.2978232(115-120)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2016
    • (2015)Towards a Better Understanding of the Different Computing DisciplinesProceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education10.1145/2808006.2808016(55-56)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2015
    • (2015)Alumni as a resource to increase student retention in early computer science coursesProceedings of the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2015.7344025(1-9)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2015

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