Five recommendations for reducing curricular barriers: minimize transfer delay, eliminate choke points, flex calculus timing, shrink core requirements, and publish multiple degree plans¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

From comparing the 60 degree maps, the authors distill five recommendations departments can use to evaluate and change their degrees: minimize delay factor for transfer students, eliminate choke points that prevent student progress, offer flexibility for when calculus must be completed, require a small set of core requirements to increase flexibility, and improve how course requirements and plans of study are communicated. They recommend "reducing choke points by offering pathways, such as those demonstrated by some programs who had algorithms, software engineering, and systems pathways throughout their degree," so a student struggling in one pathway can progress in another rather than leaving the major.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Departmental control over degree plans, prerequisites, and the public-facing communication of plans of study

Constraints¶

• The recommendations are grounded in correlational findings across 60 within-discipline CS majors (IPEDS CIP codes 11.01 and 11.07) and do not address intersectional identity or interdisciplinary CS+X degrees

Target Learners¶

• Undergraduate computer science majors, including transfer students and students discovering CS later in college

Target Learning Goals¶

• On-time graduation and persistence in the computing major

Affordances¶

• Curricular Analytics Complexity Measures

Claims¶

• The authors' data supports that Calculus 1 need not be a prerequisite for lower-level CS courses [+W]
• Programs with higher representation of women require a smaller share of core CS credits (26% vs 33%) and offer more flexibility [+W]
• CS programs with higher structural curricular complexity have lower representation of women graduates (ANOVA across three representation groups) [+W]
• Blocking factors of CS 1 and CS 2 differ significantly across women-representation groups, with lower-blocking programs having higher representation of women [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Albert Lionelle, McKenna Quam, Carla Brodley, and Catherine Gill. 2024. Does Curricular Complexity in Computer Science Influence the Representation of Women CS Graduates?. In Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2024). https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630835