Research Statement

Introduction

As an educator, my goal is student success, and to me, that means not just in the classroom but outside of the classroom. I want the technology I am teaching to be understood well enough or up-to-date, so students are as prepared in their four years of getting a degree to get a job. As I grow as an educator and get more involved in research, I hope to succeed by my research priority revolving around technology and making sure students have the relevant skills needed to work in the workforce after their four years of getting a degree.

Current Projects

Currently, I am working on helping create the curriculum for our Web and User Experience program at Weber State University. We started on this a few years back, but we continue to adjust. Our current adjustments are creating two pathways, one for full-stack web development and the other focused on user experience. Each path has pieces of the other so students can become familiar with the other areas. With this project, we have met with our industry advisory committee to get feedback to cover items in need. As we start getting students through our project, this is where my future research idea comes in. With technology changing rapidly, are students prepared for the workforce after a four-year degree in web and user experience? Even with insight from our industry advisory committee, does the technology we teach during student's first year still relevant in their fourth year or upon graduating and trying to go into the workforce? Technologies in the web and user experience area change so quickly that we want to make sure students are as prepared as possible and adapt. As the program grows, I want to gather data from our students to adapt as quickly to these changes as possible.

Future Work

I am interested in exploring the student's perception of whether they are prepared for the workforce after completing a four-year degree in web and user experience. With how fast technology changes in this field, I find it essential to know whether the curriculum being taught is up-to-date and is valuable to students and if they feel prepared for the workforce. Multiple sources purport students who complete a four-year college degree will not have the skills to be relevant in the current workforce (synergisticIT, 2021). With student success being a high priority in higher education, it is essential to understand the implications of providing a degree that is perceived as useful for procuring gainful employment upon graduation (Giannakos et al., 2017).

As an instructor in the School of Computing at Weber State Univerity (WSU), it is an important goal to attract students to the program and retain those who are currently attending courses. The purpose of the study is to evaluate students' perceptions to influence future program designs. The research needs to pinpoint what skills or technologies are relevant or not by the time a student graduates and use that to make adjustments to the program design, so students are prepared for the workforce. With technology changing rapidly, are students prepared for the workforce after a four-year degree in web and user experience. Questions for this research would include how viable is a student in the workforce after a four-year web and user experience degree? Do students report a preference related to studying current technologies in their academic program?

References

Giannakos, M. N., Pappas, I. O., Jaccheri, L., & Sampson, D. G. (2017). Understanding student retention in computer science education: The role of environment, gains, barriers, and usefulness. Education and Information Technologies, 22(5), 2365-2382.

synergisticIT. (2021, May 9). Synergistic It. https://www.synergisticit.com/tech-companies-not-hire-computer-science-graduate