Feb 2007 - Feb 2013

Summary of the objectives
In collaboration with the Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity (CEED), and members David Kasch (left), Alice Ho (middle), and Marc Levis-Fitzgerald (right) from UCLA's Center for Educational Assessment team has developed a comprehensive assessment to evaluate the impact and success of Frontier Opportunities in Computing for Underrepresented Students (FOCUS) in promoting academic success and persistence for underrepresented students in the computer sciences at UCLA.

One of the unique features of the FOCUS project is the multiple opportunities for involvement it offers students. In essence, each student is able to create and develop his or her own intervention experience through participation in a wide range of computer science based learning activities. This level of individualization and specialization introduces high levels of evaluation complexity. To address this complexity, the Center has adopted a mixed methods evaluation strategy based on the "partial comparisons" technique. Partial comparison allows for a systematic assessment and comparison of individual initiative components to locate and identify independent effects and cumulative effects from program initiatives. Determining causal relationships for individual components in this type of evaluation is extremely difficult; however, partial comparison reduces some of this difficulty by connecting multiple quantitative and qualitative data sources to triangulate independent and cumulative effects.

The formative and summative objectives for the assessment are:

  1. To evaluate the impact of current FOCUS activities on student success
  2. To identify FOCUS activities that promote the greatest success for underrepresented students in the computer sciences
  3. To provide insight into obstacles and tools for success for underrepresented students in the computer sciences at UCLA
  4. To provide data, program descriptions, and best-practices tools needed to support implementation of programs like FOCUS at other schools
  5. To increase the number of underrepresented students retained in the computer sciences at UCLA

© 2007-2013 UCLA Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity