Abstract

Attrition is an important issue in higher education, especially in the field of computer science (CS). Here, we investigate to what extent an education reform affects the attrition of students by analyzing the pattern of grades of CS students’ academic achievement from 2010 to 2018 by IRT, based on Rasch-model analysis. We analyze data from 3673 undergraduate students of a large public university. In 2016 an education reform—as an intervention—was added to our BSc program: all theoretical lectures became compulsory to attend and we introduced a learning methodology course for all first-year students. According to our results, after the education reform most subjects became accomplishable, and students with lower levels of ability also tried to take exams. We succeeded in retaining 28% of our students. Analyzing students’ results could help administrators develop new programs in order to increase retention.

Details

Title
Applying the Rasch model to analyze the effectiveness of education reform in order to decrease computer science students’ dropout
Author
Takács, Rita 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kárász, Judit T. 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Takács, Szabolcs 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Horváth, Zoltán 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Oláh, Attila 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Doctoral School of Psychology, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.5591.8) (ISNI:0000 0001 2294 6276); ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Psychology, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.5591.8) (ISNI:0000 0001 2294 6276) 
2  ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Doctoral School of Education, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.5591.8) (ISNI:0000 0001 2294 6276); ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Education, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.5591.8) (ISNI:0000 0001 2294 6276) 
3  Institute of Psychology, Department of General Psychology and Methodology, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.5591.8); Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.445677.3) (ISNI:0000 0001 2108 6518) 
4  ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Informatics, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.5591.8) (ISNI:0000 0001 2294 6276) 
Publication year
2021
Publication date
Dec 2021
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
e-ISSN
2662-9992
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00725-w
ProQuest document ID
2683036412
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.