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What Makes Valuable Pre-experience for Students Entering Programming Courses?

Introduction In the Information Technology (IT) department at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the authors started looking at retention in initial programming courses in the IT undergraduate program. It was observed that certain students seemed to be unintentionally intimidated by other students who appeared to have more experience. This caused the students without prior experience to not become fully engaged in the course. A formula was developed to predict performance in the first course in the programming sequence (Holden & Weeden, 2003). It was then decided to group incoming students into cohorts based on their score using the formula, under the assumption that the students without experience would not be intimidated. This series of studies was used to examine student performance as measured by the grade received in the class (Holden & Weeden, 2003, 2004, 2005). An earlier study by Wilson and Shrock (2001) indicated that students performed better when they are comfortable in class. One way to increase comfort would be to have a more homogeneous group. Since 2002, data has been collected on all incoming freshmen students beginning the Information Technology program at RIT. This data has shown the types and level of experience possessed by these students. Course performance has been measured by the grade received in initial courses. These grades are expressed in the traditional four-point scale used at most US colleges and universities. The formula was developed and used in our prior studies (Holden & Weeden, 2003, 2004, 2005) to analyze the experience level of students entering the program. The formula has been used to determine the depth of experience of each incoming freshman. The formula focused on the formal experience that a student can encounter before entering the program. The formula included formal high-school courses, college courses, work experience and exposure to object-oriented concepts only and is documented in Appendix A. It did not include informal activities. This is similar in concept to the formula developed by Wilson and Shrock (2001) to determine experience level except that they included other factors that we did not consider relevant for our study. Other factors are evaluated separately later in this paper. These include other ways to gain experience that are not included in the formula and include programming for enjoyment, self teaching, summer camps or other short programs, and clubs. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] This paper will layout the results of prior studies (Holden and Weeden, 2003, 2004, 2005) and report on the sources of prior experience both inside and outside the formula mentioned above, and how this experience impacts the performance, as measured by grade in the first programming course, Introduction to Programming I (4002-217). This course is the first of a three or four course sequence, as documented in prior studies (Holden and Weeden, 2003) and is illustrated in Figure 1. Methodology Since 2003, a survey has been sent to all students in the summer before their freshman year. Students were asked to return the survey before they would be registered for their programming courses. This survey investigated five areas. * General computing background * Computer programming experience * RIT and program affiliation * About yourself * Learning styles Only the first two areas are covered in this study. This study was aimed at gaining insight into prior student experience in programming and individual motivation to program. The survey data was collected for later analysis when course grades were available. The questions related to this study are included in Appendix B. Part I of the survey was designed to determine the students' comfort using computers and asked if they had any prior programming experience, either academically, in a work environment or for fun. …