Work in progress - Peer-Led Team Learning implementation in Computer Science

The Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CA-HSI) is a consortium of eight institutions that is committed to increasing the number of Hispanics who earn baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing. CA-HSI is implementing and promoting the development of Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) in the computing curriculum as one of its interventions to increase the number of students who succeed in computing gatekeeper courses. PLTL is a proven strategy for retention and motivation of students having already shown its effectiveness in other disciplines. It utilizes student-driven focus groups to confront issues of lack of academic and social support. CA-HSI is creating a repository for support materials for PLTL implementation and it is also promoting implementation within the Alliance as well as other institutions. This paper discusses the materials and mechanisms for implementations, and it presents initial results of the intervention. At least 2,000 computing students have used these materials to date.