An Analysis of Student Performance

The Computing Laboratory at the University of Kent delivers a range of modules to a variety of student cohorts. One aspect of the provision is the delivery of modules to students who are following specialist degree programmes in Computer Science (CS), Computer Systems Engineering (CSE), or who are following joint honours programmes with Computer Science as one part. Another aspect is the provision of distinct modules, classified as Applied Computing (AC) modules, to students who are also taking modules in the Social Sciences or Humanities faculties. Those students may be following joint honours programmes, or may be taking the Computing modules as wild modules. We often see high failure rates for first year students on modules teaching programming, mathematics or subjects dealing with quantitative analysis. But particularly high failure rates have been noticed recently for many of the Applied Computing modules. This report concerns the results obtained by students on some of the modules that were examined in the summer of 2002 and 2003.