The Impact of Self-Theories to Academic Achievement and Soft Skills in Undergraduate CS Studies: First Findings - UTU Research Portal

A4 Refereed article in a conference publication

The Impact of Self-Theories to Academic Achievement and Soft Skills in Undergraduate CS Studies: First Findings

Authors: Mikko Apiola, Mikko-Jussi Laakso

Editors: N/A

Conference name: Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Publishing place: New York, NY

Publication year: 2019

Journal: Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Book title : Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

First page : 16

Last page: 22

ISBN: 978-1-4503-6895-7

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3304221.3319766

Web address : https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3319766

Abstract

There is strong evidence of the impact of self-theories to students' academic achievement and behavior in many domains of education, including CS. However, the research on self-theories in CSE are far from conclusive. In this research, we studied 1st year CS and CE students' self-theories and looked at associations to academic achievement in their first courses, as well as the students' conceptualisations of intelligence. Contradictory to previous research, students with a fixed view on intelligence received the best exam scores. Students' conceptualisations of intelligence were found to lean towards cognitive g-theories of intelligence. These initial findings show a number of crucially important future research directions in relation to self-theories, soft skills development, and academic achievement in CS studies.