Early Computer Science Students' Perspectives Towards The Importance Of Writing

Faculty and industry practitioners recognize written communication to be important in computer science, but it can be challenging to convince students of the same. As student perceptions are molded early in a program of study, we focus on early-year CS students to understand their perceptions towards the importance of writing in CS, with the goal of framing discipline-specific writing pedagogy. We qualitatively analyze responses from first and second-year CS students in a survey about the role of writing in their field. The responses reveal that a majority view writing as an indispensable skill. Specifically, students recognize it as a fundamental skill, applicable across diverse contexts, and uniquely relevant in CS compared to other fields. We identified 4 perceptions that they hold which are helpful to their development as writers: that writing is a useful fundamental skill, which is useful for achieving various goals in a variety of contexts, and that writing in CS is different than in other fields. However, 20% of responses include reasons why writing is not important in CS, and we identify 4 perceptions harmful to students' development as writers: that writing skills can be avoided, are defined narrowly, do not need to be developed beyond a baseline, and come at the cost of computing skills. We believe that there is an opportunity to align discipline-specific writing instruction with these useful and harmful perceptions.