In this article, we address the question of why computing students choose to learn computing topics on their own. A better understanding of why some students choose to learn on their own may help us to motivate other students to develop this important skill. In addition, it may help in curriculum design; if we need to leave some topics out of our…

Scholarly communities in computing determine how to produce and validate knowledge within their domains of focus. Much of this knowledge can remain tacit because of shared ways of becoming a disciplinary scholar within any particular area of computing. But such tacitness presents challenges for computing education scholarship, since knowledge…