Profiling the experience of second year computing students

Abstract

The struggles of first year computer science students has been extensively studied. Work has focused on students who choose not to complete introductory programming courses (CS1, CS2), with the decision to not complete attributed to a lack of prior programming experience, difficulty in grasping course content, and changes in personal priorities. The experience of students in the second year, however, is less well studied. We conducted an interview-based study of students in the second year who have dropped a second year compute science course. Our goal is to better understand student challenges that lead to the decision to drop in the second year and to compare the factors that are identified to those that are relevant to non-completion of the first year.