Predicting Success in University First Year Computing Science Courses
Diana Cukierman · 2015
Educators find that many students have difficulty succeeding in first-year university Computing Science (CS) courses. Initiatives are pursued to address this challenge and to support students' academic success. Instructors and institutions have reported providing different forms of academic support with programs where learning strategies are discussed with students, such as the Academic Enhancement Program (AEP). The AEP is a student focused proactive intervention developed and run by the School of Computing Science and the Student Learning Commons at Simon Fraser University, providing opportunities for self-reflection and exposure to study strategies activities, incorporated within and tailored to selected first year CS university courses, since 2006. To further enhance the students' learning experience, instructors also incorporate novel activities in class, such as peer instruction and active learning aided with the use of audience response systems (i-clickers). Experimental studies to determine whether the incorporation of these activities in a course cause a variation in some outcome measures (such as final exam scores) may be not feasible to do. In this paper we present instead results from performing statistical studies on course evaluation data, which even if they cannot prove causality, they may allow to determine if these activities are statistically significant predictors of course success.