Designing Course Level-Appropriate Mentoring for Computing Students

Abstract In this research-to-practice full paper, we describe our mentoring initiative, where we incorporated mentoring into a sophomore and a freshman computing course in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023, respectively. Based on our previous work 1, these mentoring initiatives aimed to develop students' sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and computing identity, as research 3, 4 shows sense of belonging and self-efficacy are the two main reasons for low enrollment and retaining underrepresented computing students. First-year retention in STEM programs is always challenging. Data shows underrepresented students' first-year retention rate is even lower than most students 2. Research 3, 4 also indicates that attracting and retaining underrepresented students, including women, is challenging without role models and mentoring. Studies 5 also found that mentoring is the most effective intervention to improve the self-efficacy of underrepresented students. Currently, in many works, mentoring is applied successfully. However, existing initiatives do not detail enough for replication, and they did not explore whether we need course-level specific mentoring for computing students to retain them and help them succeed. In our work, to find out "Do we need course-level specific mentoring?" research questions we used: 1. Do we need to design different mentoring activities for the freshman vs. sophomore course? 2. Is there any difference in students' perceptions towards mentoring between the freshman and sophomore courses? We conducted a literature and pre-course surveys to answer our first research question. Based on our survey outputs, we designed course-specific mentoring objectives. For the Freshman course, our objectives were assisting students to i) explore computing career opportunities, ii) build a sense of belongingness, self-efficacy, and computing identity, and iii) transition to computing. On the other hand, for our sophomore course, our objectives were assisting students to i) strengthen belongingness, self-efficacy, and computing identity, ii) develop strategies to be successful in computing, and iii) develop career plans and explore resources. To achieve these objectives, we designed a set of course-specific mentoring activities. In our initiatives, we formed a group of mentors composed of successful alums, graduate students, senior students, industrial personnel, and faculty of different races, genders, and ethnicities. We conducted anonymous surveys, interviews, and reflections to answer our second research question. We also analyzed students' course performance. Results show mentoring improves the sense of belonging and confidence for both groups of students. Data also indicates first-year students prefer mentoring to succeed academically (e.g., learning programming). On the other hand, sophomores like mentoring to get career advice. Both groups expressed positive opinions toward mentoring. For both groups, class average final grade performance was higher compared to the control groups. Our research describes how to design course-level-appropriate mentoring for computing students. Our mentoring should help our underrepresented students and the other beginners (majority of students) still looking for their place in the computing field. References: 1 Anonymous, "anonymous," Proceedings of ACM conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE), July 10-12, Turku, Finland. (Acceptance Rate: 27%). 2 Retention Data: https://irds.iupui.edu/students/retention-and-graduation.html, Last Accessed: October 06, 2023 3 Leibowitz, J. B., Lovitt, C. F., & Seager, C. S. (2020). Development and Validation of a Survey to Assess Belonging, Academic Engagement, and Self-Efficacy in STEM RLCs. Learning Communities: Research & Practice, 8(1), 3. 4 Lewis, K. L., Stout, J. G., Finkelstein, N. D., Pollock, S. J., Miyake, A., Cohen, G. L., & Ito, T. A. (2017). Fitting in to move forward: Belonging, gender, and persistence in the physical sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (pSTEM). Psychology of Women Quarterly, 41(4), 420-436. 5 McGee, E. (2019). Mentoring underrepresented students in STEMM: A survey and discussion. The science of effective mentorship in STEMM.