AN INVESTIGATION OF THE IMPACT OF STUDENT SUPPORT INITIATIVES ON THE RETENTION OF COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS

It is widely reported that attrition rates in third level Computer Science (CS) courses are relatively high. Many potential reasons have been suggested for this. These include students being ill-informed in relation to their university course choice and having limited exposure to key topics on the CS curriculum prior to their third level experience. Additional reasons include poor mathematical, problem solving and language skills of students. Further reasons highlight limitations in programming lab design and a lack of practice and feedback for students. In this paper we look at the impact of a series of support initiatives for prospective and current ICT students, and in particular CS students, that have been implemented at our institution. This paper presents our findings from the last 4 years in relation to qualitative student feedback on these support interventions. In addition we present quantitative findings focusing on how engagement with any of these supports has impacted student retention and progression. In general student feedback has been positive and students that engage with some of these initiatives are more likely to progress in their undergraduate programme. However, our analysis also suggests that more work needs to be done focusing on 'at-risk' students.