Refereed article in conference proceedings (A4)
The Impact of Self-Theories to Academic Achievement and Soft Skills in Undergraduate CS Studies: First Findings
List of Authors: Mikko Apiola, Mikko-Jussi Laakso
Conference name: Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
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
Start page: 16
End page: 22
ISBN: 978-1-4503-6895-7
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3304221.3319766
URL: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3319766
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.