Experiences of Non-CS majors in Introductory CS Courses
A project I led investigating the experiences of non-CS majors in two different large introductory CS courses at UCSD
This post summarizes research that I conducted alongside Ruoxuan Li and Gerald Soosai Raj. Read the full paper here
In this project, we collected survey data from over 500 non-majors in two different introductory CS courses at UCSD: CS0, and CS1. This data included both self-reported confidence levels (on a Likert scale of 1-5), as well as open-ended textual responses about what their fears were going into the course. We used the following mixed-methods to answer several research questions regarding these aspects of their experience in the course:
In our qualitative analysis, we thematically coded the students’ open ended responses and identified the following fears:
In addition, when comparing students’ reported change in confidence (difference between their reported confidence the first and last weeks), we found a statistically significant difference between the two courses.
Finally, we looked at possible connections between students’ change in confidence and their fears going into the course. The figure below shows the results for each of the courses.
