EngageIT: Building Capacity in Community Colleges to Recruit and Retain Underrepresented Students in Computing

多样化、受过良好教育的计算和信息技术(CS/IT)劳动力对美国的福祉至关重要。社区大学独特的包容性和开放获取的使命使它们成为干预的关键。科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的“EngageIT”项目将为社区学院CS/IT教员开发和测试一种职业发展(PD)模式，以培养他们招聘和留住女性和代表性不足的少数族裔的能力。该项目将调查学生在计算机科学/信息技术学科中的坚持性，以衡量PD的有效性，并为教师提供针对特定项目的多样性数据。该项目将包括三个活动：(1)设计一个可扩展的、基于研究的PD课程；(2)与两个教师队列一起实施该课程；以及(3)跟踪学生在该学科中的坚持性，以此作为评估PD有效性的手段。该项目将利用国家妇女与信息技术中心(NCWIT)的大量专业知识和网络，包括基于研究的招聘和保留做法、1500多个学生参与课程库(EngageCSEdu)、一个专门的社区学院顾问委员会和社会科学家来支持该项目。这项研究将使用混合方法方法，这将使三角测量和综合数据分析成为可能，这是通过简单的定量或定性研究无法实现的。以标准为基础的评估将为每个教员提供实施PD的客观衡量标准。评估PD前和PD后将考虑到教员在参与此项目之前可能已经实施的不同程度的敬业实践。研究结果将帮助教育工作者了解学生在CS/IT领域的不同坚持性，以及教师在该领域多样化中所发挥的作用，有助于为不同的学生提供更有吸引力的学习环境，并导致美国技术队伍更加多样化。

A diverse, well-educated computing and information technology (CS/IT) workforce is vital to U.S. well-being. The unique inclusive and open-access mission of community colleges makes them crucial points of intervention. The "EngageIT" project at the University of Colorado at Boulder will develop and test a model of professional development (PD) for community college CS/IT faculty that builds their capacity to recruit and retain women and underrepresented minorities. The project will investigate student persistence in CS/IT disciplines to measure the effectiveness of the PD and to empower faculty with program-specific diversity data.This project will consist of three activities: (1) designing a scalable, research-based PD course; (2) implementing this course with two cohorts of faculty; and (3) tracking student persistence in the discipline as a means to evaluate PD efficacy. The project will make use of the National Center for Women & Information Technology's (NCWIT) considerable expertise and network, including research-based recruitment and retention practices, a 1500+ curricula repository for student engagement (EngageCSEdu), a dedicated community college advisory board, and social scientists to support the project. The study will use a mixed methods approach, which will enable triangulation and synthesized data analysis that is unavailable through a simple quantitative or qualitative study. Rubric-based assessments will provide an objective measure of the implementation of the PD for each faculty member. Assessing both pre- and post-PD will account for the different levels of engagement practices the faculty may already be implementing prior to involvement in this project. Research findings will help educators to understand differential student persistence in CS/IT and the role faculty play in the field's diversification, helping to provide more engaging learning environments for diverse students, and leading to a more diverse U.S. technical workforce.