Analyzing motivation and sense of belonging belonging in CS1 review sessions

Author

Cory Longenecker, James Madison UniversityFollow

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Date of Graduation

5-12-2023

Publish

yes

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Department of Computer Science

Advisor(s)

Dee A. B. Weikle

Chris Mayfield

Chris Johnson

Kenn Barron

Abstract

The Computer Science Department at James Madison University has a Teaching Assistant program which aims to help students succeed in early-level Computer Science courses. Part of this program is a review session, the Fourth Hour, which provides students extra help on the concepts taught each week in class. Historically, attendance at this review session has been low. Because of this, the study aimed to increase attendance by motivating students through interventions, primarily offering quiz retakes to students who attended. Additionally, this study looked at the reported sense of belonging for participants who attended.

We made three conclusions from survey data we collected. First, giving students incentives in the form of quiz retakes notably increased attendance. Second, students who did not attend the Fourth Hour had a greater sense of belonging, likely because many of them were not struggling. Third, the primary reason students reported not attending is that they did not see value in attending, possibly because they have a greater sense of belonging than students who attended.

Recommended Citation

Longenecker, Cory, "Analyzing motivation and sense of belonging belonging in CS1 review sessions" (2023). Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current. 162.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors202029/162