Collaborative Research: RAPID: Investigating Impacts of and Response to COVID-19 in the Technology Innovation Enterprise

The COVID-19 pandemic is quickly altering the landscape of our personal and professional lives, and the impacts from the pandemic on the innovation enterprise are profound. Industry is seeing hiring freezes and layoffs. Teachers and college faculty have had to quickly shift to online course delivery. Students have also had to make the shift to online courses, and many face the loss of communal labs that are set-up to support their work. If we are to be able to respond effectively to the impacts of the pandemic, it is paramount that we quickly gather systematic data, in real-time, from the innovation community. This RAPID award will assess the state of the computing innovation community from K-12 education to the tech workforce. Through a survey of the short, medium, and long term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the community, this project will elucidate the current state of persistence in computing degree programs and professions and inform efforts to design and deliver education and workforce opportunities. This will support the technology innovation enterprise in mitigating the disruption caused by the COVD-19 pandemic, helping to stabilize the U.S. innovation ecosystem. In this RAPID award, AnitaB.org, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), and the STARS Computing Corps will gather data related to the short- and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the computing innovation enterprise. Due to the ever-changing COVID-19 situation, it is paramount to capture data in these early days and establish a baseline of information that we will be able to build on as the situation unfolds. The objective of this award is to understand the impact of the global pandemic on the conditions of work and educational environments related to factors associated with persistence in computing degree programs and professions. The team will sample across the computing ecosystem by gathering data from K-12 teachers; post-secondary program leaders, educators and students; and individuals in the computing workforce. They will assess the following research questions to understand impacts at both the individual and organizational levels: 1. How is the computing ecosystem (K12, postsecondary, industry, startup) responding to the COVID-19 crisis? 2. What are the short-term, intermediate, and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the computing community, in terms of the design and delivery of computing instruction (K12, postsecondary) and research and the experiences of technologists in industry? This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.