A Scalable Approach to Support Computer Science Students in Their Learning and Preparation as Software Engineers

Higher education computer science programs traditionally focus on teaching a fairly common set of foundational programming and data structures concepts. While these foundational skills are necessary to prepare students for success as computer science or software engineering professionals, they are often insufficient to engage, inspire, and ensure persistence among the many students from first generation, low income and under-represented minority backgrounds who are pursuing degrees in computer science today. Within most academic programs there is limited opportunity for students to actually practice applying the skills they are learning to solve problems or to work with large existing code bases. Additionally, the focus on learning these foundational skills - often in discrete courses on discrete assignments - lacks the context and bigger picture that allows students to begin to develop a sense of belonging in the computer science profession. Revising the curricula within individual CS departments across multiple institutions to address these limitations would be extremely challenging and time-consuming. A viable alternative might be a scalable, non-institution-specific learning pathway that complements the knowledge and skills covered in most CS curriculum. In that vain, the Computing Talent Initiative (CTI), an institute at California State University Monterey Bay, has been offering a fully online program, called Accelerate, that is available for free to students studying CS from community colleges and state universities throughout California. The team is wrapping up the second year of offering this program, which has demonstrated promising results in helping students develop the skills and self-efficacy to make meaningful contributions to large, real-world software projects.