Enhancing Growth Mindset Academic Experiences to Support Graduation of Undergraduate Students in Computing

该项目将通过支持罗切斯特理工学院表现出经济需求的高成就低收入学生的保留和毕业，为国家对受过良好教育的科学家、数学家、工程师和技术人员的需求做出贡献。该项目为期五年，将为30名全日制一年级学生提供为期两年的奖学金。这笔资金将支持学生攻读软件工程、计算安全、计算和信息技术、网络和移动计算或以人为本计算的理学学士学位。该项目旨在通过培养成长型思维，提高学者的保留率和毕业率。拥有成长型思维的人认为他们的能力不是天生的，而是可以通过坚持和努力来增强的。教师将作为一个学习社区聚集在一起，以理解、检查、开发和应用基于证据的成长心态课程改进。他们将把这些成长思维活动整合到编程和职业准备课程中。每位学者将与一位教师导师配对，并参与在线指导社区。此外，学者们将以队列形式参加一个学期的研讨会，重点关注培养成长心态的元认知方法。该项目意义重大，因为它将思维方式从单一的课堂干预扩展到更全面的方法，解决学生在毕业和进入劳动力市场时的成功问题。它还寻求在将成长型思维方式融入中学后的学术和职业指导中，推动计算机教育知识库的发展。该项目的总体目标是提高有经济需求的低收入、高成就本科生的STEM学位完成率。本项目采用内隐智力理论作为设计和评估的框架，旨在通过在学生的学术和职业准备经历中注入成长型思维来促进学生的成功。研究表明，心态可以影响积极的学习体验，提高学习成绩，减少对刻板印象威胁的脆弱性，本项目将对计算机专业的学生采用整体成长心态方法。围绕成长型思维的元认知教学也将融入到学生辅导中，以促进学生的成功。指导该项目的两个目标：(1)提高有学术天赋的低收入学者在罗切斯特理工学院获得科学计算学士学位的完成率；(2)提出了计算机教育思维理论中的知识库。研究成果将通过计算机教育和学习科学的会议和出版物传播，并传播给整个学院的学术领袖，以促进将成功的方法推广到其他STEM学术领域。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金项目资助，旨在增加有经济需求的低收入学术天才学生在STEM领域获得学位的人数。它还旨在改善未来STEM工作者的教育，并为低收入学生提供有关学业成功、留校、转学、毕业和学术/职业道路的知识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at Rochester Institute of Technology. Over its five-year duration, this project will fund two-year scholarships to 30 unique first-year, full-time students. This funding will support the students as they pursue Bachelor of Science degrees in Software Engineering, Computing Security, Computing and Information Technologies, Web and Mobile Computing, or Human Centered Computing. This project aims to improve Scholars' retention and graduation rates by fostering a growth mindset. People with growth mindsets think that their abilities are not talents that they are born with, but instead can be enhanced through persistence and hard work. Faculty will gather as a learning community to understand, examine, develop, and apply evidence-based growth-mindset curricular enhancements. They will integrate these growth-mindset activities into programming and career preparation courses. Each Scholar will be paired with a faculty mentor and participate in an online mentoring community. In addition, Scholars will engage as a cohort in a semester seminar focusing on metacognitive approaches to fostering a growth mindset. This project is significant in that it will broaden the mindset approach beyond a single classroom intervention to a more comprehensive approach that addresses students’ success as they prepare for graduation and entry to the workforce. It also seeks to advance the computing education knowledgebase around integrating a growth mindset approach in post-secondary academic and career instruction. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. Using implicit theories of intelligence as a framework for the design and evaluation, this project aims to promote student success by infusing a growth mindset throughout students’ academic and career preparation experiences. Building on research suggesting that mindset can be influenced to promote positive learning experiences, improved academic performance, and reduced vulnerability to stereotype threat, this project will adopt a holistic growth mindset approach for computing students. Metacognitive instruction around a growth mindset will also be integrated into student mentoring with the aim of promoting student success. Two goals guide the project: (1) increase the completion rate of academically talented, low-income Scholars in earning Bachelor of Science computing degrees at Rochester Institute of Technology; and (2) advance the knowledgebase in computing education mindset theory. Research findings will be disseminated through conferences and publications in computing education and learning sciences, as well as to academic leaders across the institution to promote extension of the successful approaches to other STEM academic domains. This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.