Special Session: Process Skills in Computer Science

Process skills (also known as professional skills, lifelong learning skills, workplace skills, transferable skills, or soft skills) are an important aspect of computer science education. Learning objectives for computer science courses often include the development of process skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork, but many instructors struggle with how to encourage and measure the development of these skills. This special session will introduce detailed rubrics for assessing process skills in a manner that will model POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) facilitation techniques. Presenters will demonstrate how to use one set of these rubrics in an active learning classroom (i.e., POGIL) to provide students with feedback. The other set of rubrics assess process skills on student work and can be used with any classroom. Attendees will leave the session with a better understanding of key process skills in computer science, how to assess student interactions and student work for these skills, and how a POGIL classroom facilitates the development of critical thinking, information processing, and teamwork. This special session will appeal to any K-12 teacher or college instructor interested in developing students' process skills in a computer science class.