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High School Calculus and Computer Science Course Taking as Predictors of Success in Introductory College Computer Science

Authors:

Gerhard Sonnert,

Philip M. SadlerAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), Volume 21, Issue 1

Article No.: 6, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3433169

Published: 31 December 2020 Publication History

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Abstract

Success in an introductory college computer science (CS) course encourages students to major and pursue careers in computer science and many other STEM fields, whereas weak performance is often a powerful deterrent. This article examines the role of high school course taking (AP, regular, or none) in mathematics and in CS as predictors of later success in college introductory computer science courses, measured by students’ final grades. Using a sample of 9,418 students from a stratified random sample of 118 U.S. colleges and universities, we found that the observed advantage of taking AP calculus over taking AP CS, seen in an uncontrolled model, was largely confounded by students’ background characteristics. After applying multinomial propensity score weighting, we estimated that the effects of taking AP calculus and AP CS on college CS grades were similar. Interestingly, enrollment in both AP calculus and AP CS did not have any additional positive effect, suggesting that both AP calculus and AP CS strengthened similar skills that are important for long-term CS achievement. Taking regular CS did not have a significant effect; taking regular calculus had a positive effect, about half the size of taking AP calculus or AP CS. Thus, the study showed that simply exposing students to any kind of CS course before college does not appear to be sufficient for improving college CS performance; and that advanced CS and advanced calculus in high school may substitute for each other in the preparation of college CS.

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Cited By

Brodley CQuam MWeiss M(2024)An Analysis of the Math Requirements of 199 CS BS/BA Degrees at 158 U.S. UniversitiesCommunications of the ACM10.1145/366148267:8(122-131)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
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Index Terms

High School Calculus and Computer Science Course Taking as Predictors of Success in Introductory College Computer Science
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        CS1
      2. K-12 education

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computing Education

ACM Transactions on Computing Education Volume 21, Issue 1

March 2021

211 pages

EISSN:1946-6226

DOI:10.1145/3446622

Editor:
Chris Hundhausen
Washington State University, USA

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Copyright © 2020 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Publication History

Published: 31 December 2020

Accepted: 01 November 2020

Revised: 01 October 2020

Received: 01 June 2020

Published in TOCE Volume 21, Issue 1

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