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. I also want to make sure I am using intuitive and new technology in the classroom to help that success, so students are using the latest types of technology and are aware of the different technologies that exist.

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?

With getting the student's perspectives on the flow of the course content and whether there is a disconnect between what they are doing and getting a job within that area, I also want to look at the faculty side. This will allow me to see the faculty side of where they think the disconnect between skills and getting a student a job is. Seeing both sides of the spectrum will help fix those issues. On the faculty side, it will allow me to see what faculty may be missing, whether it be access to a particular technology, no access to industry partners, lack of resources, or whether there are policies that affect what the faculty can do to achieve student success from school to get a job. On the student's side, they can input the technology being taught, whether that technology was being used in the fields, they were going into, whether they feel prepared for being interviewed for jobs, and what could have been done better in the program. Having both access to all of this allows for a full circle of information to help student success and faculty success by filling in the unknown gaps that may exist on an individual basis.

Conclusion

In the end, I want to use technology to help faculty and students be successful, so they can go into an area that they enjoy and not feel left behind or even have a sense of imposter syndrome. I feel as though whatever I can do to achieve this will go a long way and help change the lives of those going in a technology-related field with full-stack development or user experience. It will be a lot of work to stay current with the ever-changing technology and gather data from faculty and students on finding this disconnect, but I think it can be achieved. As this progress happens, it will always be ongoing as technology changes, but I think with the direction things are going, it is the best move to keep higher education current and competitive in the fast-paced world of today. As we use technology more and more, it is that much more critical that we focus research on how to teach it more effectively and adaptably.

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