“SHOULD I BECOME A COMPUTER ENGINEER?” USING AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE WITH UPPER SECONDARY STUDENTS TO SUPPORT FACULTY CHOICE

Universities often carry out initiatives to assist upper secondary students in their choice of university faculties and courses. However, most of such initiatives are transmissive, and do not offer students hands-on experiences or opportunities for peer interaction. This paper instead presents an immersive, team-based experience on educational robotics offered to prospective students in Computer Engineering (N=88). Evaluation of the activity focused on: (1) improvements in students’ awareness when it comes to pick a faculty and a course; (2) improvements in basic Computer Sciences knowledge; (3) prospective students’ interactions and community-building. The results suggest that students' knowledge and skills are improved at the end of the experience and that this has a positive effect on their attitude towards the choice of a specific faculty and/or course. Student interactions proved to be more critical, as most teams displayed a low quality of social interactions.