Promoting Students’ Social Interactions Results in an Improvement in Performance, Class Attendance and Retention in First Year Computing Courses

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents the impact of Learning Communities (LC) on student retention, class attendance and performance outcomes in first-year computing courses. LCs are a group of students who enroll in two or more courses, generally in different disciplines that are linked together by a common theme, in an academic semester. Our results show that when first-year students take computing courses as part of a LC, retention rates increase and students perform significantly better. We also found that LCs promote class attendance and that students' academic and social interactions with classmates may play a critical role in the improvement of student performance observed in LC students.