> We've gotten a lot better at recruiting CS students from underrepresented groups (women and BIPOC chiefly), but numbers drop off quickly
Are you really better at it if you can’t retain them in the long run?
The stats you shared are interesting, but to me it seems to highlight that students are getting “weeded out” at the beginning of the course. I would be curious to attempt a correlation with High school GPA and SAT scores. Because, if lower performing students leave, regardless of gender or race, that’s to be expected. But if overachieving students of color leave and their (white or asian) peers with lower grades don’t, now that’s an interesting issue.
> Students arrive in intro CS courses, are sat next to students who have been coding since they were 10, and are rightfully intimidated even though they could succeed in the course.
I would argue the solution here is to have different “levels” of intro courses. Because the converse is also true; students that are coming in with a decade of coding and who already had an introduction to programming might assume they will be able to “coast out” courses and then suddenly realize they are falling behind their peers. And then drop out.
Are you really better at it if you can’t retain them in the long run? The stats you shared are interesting, but to me it seems to highlight that students are getting “weeded out” at the beginning of the course. I would be curious to attempt a correlation with High school GPA and SAT scores. Because, if lower performing students leave, regardless of gender or race, that’s to be expected. But if overachieving students of color leave and their (white or asian) peers with lower grades don’t, now that’s an interesting issue.
> Students arrive in intro CS courses, are sat next to students who have been coding since they were 10, and are rightfully intimidated even though they could succeed in the course.
I would argue the solution here is to have different “levels” of intro courses. Because the converse is also true; students that are coming in with a decade of coding and who already had an introduction to programming might assume they will be able to “coast out” courses and then suddenly realize they are falling behind their peers. And then drop out.