Replication and Expansion Study on Factors Influencing Student Performance in CS2

While many studies have focused on students’ performance in CS1 courses, research related to the performance and persistence of students in CS2 classes is not as widely performed. In this work, we will extend our previous work to examine students’ performance in CS2. We examined a data set that spanned over seven years on more than 5300 student records. In addition to typical factors studied by others (i.e. gender, race, CS1 performance), our work also took into account the relationship between various CS1 pathways to CS2, student major, and the number of previous college CS courses (including transfer credits) and student performance in CS2. CS1 grade is a good indicator of performance in CS2. Gender was not a significant factor in determining performance in CS2 and undeclared engineering majors stood out as high performers. CS majors passed the course at higher rates than other majors. Our large data set allowed for more granular analysis according to race and ethnicity and additional access to students’ underserved status. Race and ethnicity had a significant correlation with performance, and so did the underserved status. Our large data set confirmed some of the findings of our previous work, while providing some new insight.