Contrasting CS Student and Academic Perspectives and Experiences of Student Engagement

There is widespread acceptance of the use of national benchmarks to measure student engagement, including the North American National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) in the USA and Canada, the Student Experience Survey (SES) in Australia, and the United Kingdom Engagement Survey (UKES). The performance of Computer Science (CS) on these benchmarks has generally been poor over a number of years and is consistently low across a range of instruments with little sign of improvement. It is difficult to argue that the technical nature of the CS discipline is the issue as related STEM disciplines consistently rate higher on many measures. Given the deteriorating performance of CS across multiple student engagement instruments, the urgency of addressing this issue is increasing. Missing from computing education research on this issue to date is the CS student voice and a deeper understanding of why CS students rate their experience so poorly. It is essential to seek the perspectives of both sides of the dialogue primarily responsible for creating the student experience. We carried out an in-depth analysis of student perspectives and experiences relating to their engagement in CS courses and compared it to the perspectives and experiences of CS academics. The outcome of this Working Group was a better understanding of areas of difference between CS students and academics on: what constitutes student engagement; who is responsible for student engagement; examples of both positive and negative engagement experiences in the classroom; and current initiatives to improve student engagement in their CS courses.