Investigating the Relationship Between the Admission Score and the Performance in Introductory Programming

• Leonardo Soares Silva Instituto Federal de Pernambuco
• Joanne Gabriela dos Santos Silva Instituto Federal de Pernambuco
• Milena Siqueira Santos Instituto Federal de Pernambuco

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/educomp.2021.14472

Abstract

There is a demand to identify programming students who will need pedagogical support as a strategy to combat dropout and retention. Different characteristics of the students were analyzed for this purpose, including educational admission scores. However, there is a need for data in the Brazilian educational context. This study presents a statistical analysis of the academic data of 292 students, in which their admission scores were correlated with the learning performance achieved in the introductory programming class. A weak positive correlation was observed, which corroborates other studies in the literature. The implications of this result for the construction of academic performance prediction models in programming are discussed. In addition, a meta-analysis procedure was carried out to summarize the body of knowledge from other studies on this topic.

Keywords: programming learning, learning prediction, admission scores

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