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机和信息技术（CS/IT）劳动力对美国的福祉至关重要。社区学院独特的包容性和开放性使命使其成为干预的关键。科罗拉多大学博尔德分校（University of Colorado at Boulder）的“EngageIT”项目将为社区学院CS/IT教师开发和测试一种专业发展模式（PD），以培养他们招聘和留住女性和少数族裔的能力。该项目将调查学生在CS/IT学科的持久性，以衡量PD的有效性，并为教师提供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、以研究为基础的PD课程；(2)以两批教员实施本课程；(3)跟踪学生对学科的坚持，作为评估PD有效性的一种手段。该项目将利用国家妇女信息技术中心（NCWIT）的大量专业知识和网络，包括以研究为基础的招聘和保留实践、1500多个学生参与课程库（EngageCSEdu）、专门的社区大学咨询委员会和社会科学家来支持该项目。该研究将采用混合方法，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获得的。基于标准的评估将为每位教员的PD实施提供客观的衡量标准。评估pd前和pd后将考虑教师在参与该项目之前可能已经实施的不同程度的参与实践。研究结果将有助于教育工作者了解CS/IT学生的不同坚持以及教师在该领域多样化中的作用，有助于为不同的学生提供更有吸引力的学习环境，并导致美国技术劳动力更加多样化。

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.