1. ICER ‘05 Sue Fitzgerald Metropolitan State University Gary Lewandowski Xavier University Renée McCauley College of Charleston Brian Hanks Fort Lewis College Laurie Murphy Pacific Lutheran University Beth Simon University of California, San Diego Lynda Thomas University of Aberystwyth Carol Zander University of Washington, Bothell DEBUG

2. …avoid challenges …give up easily …see effort as fruitless or worse Growth Mindset Fixed Mindset …ignore useful negative feedback...feel threatened by the success of others CHALLENGES OBSTACLES EFFORT CRITICISM SUCCESS OF OTHERS …embrace challenges …persist in the face of setbacks …see effort as the path to mastery …learn from criticism …find lessons and inspiration in the success of others intelligence is static intelligence can be developed Based on a graphic by Nigel Holmes available from :http://www.pvusd.net/Departments/GATE/dweck/ Fixed Mindset Research of Carol Dweck, Stanford

3. Stanford Study: At Risk Students with GM – Higher GPA (Aaronson, et. al.) 3 1-hr about 10 says apart, 2-5 people Answer handwritten, fake “pen pal letters” to “at risk” middle schoolers – build in examples from own life Shown video about how intelligence is growable (with evidence from “brain researchers”) Picture taken of participant and clipped to letter Got a thank you note from pen-pal and teacher Wrote 2 nd letter in next session 3 rd Session reworked letters into speeches, audiotaped them, listened to audiotapes 2 times

4. Our Study Handout Mini lecture for 10-15 minutes Follow-up “saying is believing” activity (5-10 min)

5. Results – Intervention failed

6. Control

7. When life gives you lemons…

8. …present them at ICER (2008) Follow-up surveyFocus groups Do you remember a 10 minute talk at the beginning of [your CS1] class by [researcher]? Do you remember completing an exercise called “The Power of the Challenging Task” which asked you to describe something difficult that you have mastered after persevering and to give advice to future students on coping with the challenge of learning to program? Did any of the in-class talk on growth mind sets or the “Challenging Task” exercise affect your attitude or approach to programming and/or debugging?

9. Quentin Cutts, Glasgow: –Reinforcing message on return of every programming homework New compiler technology? Take Aways... Growth Mindsets Not for Computing? Growth Mindset Fixed Mindset 15 minute lecture60 hours of compiler errors

10. More details available B. Simon, B. Hanks, L. Murphy, S. Fitzgerald, R. McCauley, L. Thomas and C. Zander. Saying Isn't Necessarily Believing: Influencing Self- theories in Computing. In ICER '08: Proceedings of the Third International Computing Education Research Workshop, Sept. 2008. B. Hanks, L. Murphy, B. Simon, R. McCauley and C. Zander. CS1 Students Speak: Advice for Students by Students. Forthcoming in Proceedings of the Fortieth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, March 2009. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0647688. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.