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Evaluation of CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computer Education

NSF's Computer Information Science & Engineering Directorate (CISE) Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computer Education (CPATH) program is based on the recognition that a U.S. workforce with computing competencies and skills is crucial to the nation's health, security, and prosperity in the 21st century. The workforce needs to include professionals with the depth and breadth needed to sustain U.S. leadership in a wide range of application domains and career fields, as well as a broader professional workforce with deep knowledge and understanding of critical computing concepts, computational thinking methodologies and techniques.

The U.S. workforce needs and computing technologies have changed dramatically in recent decades, as computers have permeated and transformed nearly all aspects of society. Undergraduate computing education, however, often looks much as it did several decades ago. As a result, computing education is not optimally designed and structured to meet current and future national needs. The CPATH program is intended to transform undergraduate computing education on a national scale through various projects funded by the NSF.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a contract to SRI International to describe and document the program strategies utilized in infusing computational thinking across different contexts and disciplines. In particular, this evaluation is describing the various CPATH project types, new curricular and pedagogical innovations, and promising models of institutional change; examining the development of communities of practitioners and the dissemination of best practices around computational thinking; and examining the evidence for how the program is preparing students for the STEM workforce.

SRI is collecting both survey and qualitative data to describe and document program strategies. All individual project principal investigators will be asked to complete an annual data monitoring tool. Twice throughout the duration of the project, a number of faculty members at participating institutions will be asked to complete a faculty survey. Additionally, SRI will conduct annual visits to a sample of grantee institutions to document implementation over time and identify barriers and facilitating factors that lead to successful implementation.

(National Science Foundation, 2008-2013)

Key Staff

Principal Investigator: Nancy Adelman

Project Director: Raymond McGhee

Staff: Bonnee Groover, Nicolette Mayes