<p>We had a question recently that also touched on some of these <a href="https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/756/do-you-see-the-bimodal-distribution-too">same issues</a>.</p>

<p>I am a fan of expressing that the material can be difficult, as it sets the tone and prepares students to work hard in a course. However, if failure rates are as high as you suggest, then that suggests something is going seriously wrong.</p>

<p>For context, I teach at a high school where kids apply during 8th grade into 4-year majors. They are tested in math and literacy, and we interview them to see if they are generally engaged kids. We do not evaluate them on programming or CS background, because most of the 8th graders have none.</p>

<p>If accepted, they cannot change their major at any point. That means that our CS kids will have a 4 year CS curriculum that builds upon itself, and it gives us teachers a very powerful motivation not to lose kids at the beginning. It simply isn't a viable option. A freshman who gets lost will probably remain lost for their next 3 years in the school.</p>

<p>Not every kid remains enthusiastic  about CS. That's okay! They applied to the school when they were quite young, and many move on to other interests.  However, over the last 3 years, we have had exactly one student not pass the AP test as a sophomore, and that student was dealing with significant mental health challenges that also brought about high absenteeism.</p>

<p>Now, a university program is not under the same constraints, and not every student at every institution can be classified as "gifted" (whatever that actually means), so I can absolutely accept that our results might be an outlier.</p>

<p>However, virtually everybody <em>can</em> learn to code. It comes down to what work the student puts in, and how well the instructor breaks down the concepts and designs the course materials.</p>

<p>My general advice to achieve high passing rates is to create good supporting materials to use with kids who struggle, and to break things down (and make connections explicit) far beyond what you would think you would need to. I know that that advice is quite vague!</p>

<p>And if you are ever unsure about how to break down an idea really clearly, ask around. <em>(Heck, I could tell you about this one website devoted completely to getting answers to the problems of CS educators ... ;-)</em> But please don't accept a 30% failure rate as the norm, or even as acceptable. So much more is possible!</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-23T15:18:24.193Z
Thanks for the answer, it's been a very insightful read. I got sad at the "please don't accept a 30% failure rate as the norm, or even as acceptable" part, though, because that was the absolutely very best we've managed to do. College is free here and students often leave our program in the middle of the term to prospect other fields.
Ramon Melo
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-23T16:30:43.410Z
Take what I say with a grain of salt, then, because I am in such a different context. If the consequences of failure are not catastrophic, then perhaps that 30% is much more reasonable. Do kids leaving mid-range to prospect elsewhere count as failures?
Ben I.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-25T17:41:22.863Z
Yes, they do, but failing and leaving are often correlated. Students who pass CS101 and CS201 will hardly leave, and, when they do, they'll pick a major where their credits can be used, such as math or stats. Reading the 2006 article had sort of brought me a bit of peace of mind (after all, _not everyone could learn, so it was out of our reach anyway_), but the retraction made me worry our mindset might be a lot more pernicious than I had previously expected.
Ramon Melo
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-23T14:48:13.273Z
2017-06-23T14:48:13.273Z
Ben I.
<p>I'm so glad you found the retraction. I am often surprised at how far that (non-peer reviewed) paper has spread, and how few people know about its retraction. I imagine you've also seen the more recent <a href="https://computinged.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/where-cs-teachers-see-bimodality-guest-blog-post-from-elizabeth-patitsas/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">work calling bimodal distributions in CS grades into question</a>. </p>

<p>On the topic of motivation, I found the relevant chapter in <a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470484101" rel="nofollow noreferrer">How Learning Works</a> to be very useful (search "Thermodynamics" in "Look Inside"). There is a case study of a professor faced with a similar dilemma about sharing poor past grades, and then a breakdown of the various factors that influence students' motivation. In short, a supportive environment, student self-efficacy, and student value in learning the material are all needed in order to produce motivation. Making students feel that they may fail even if they put in effort will almost certainly lead to a lack of motivation, leading to poor learning. Luckily, it's possible to address all three factors in the classroom. Personally, my tool of choice has been active, collaborative learning activities like Peer-Led Team Learning and Peer Instruction---always from high-quality sources.</p>

<p>I believe NCWIT at one point recommended that professors make the overall grade distributions public <em>during</em> the course, so that students could have a realistic view of where they stand. This is for students who may think they are not cut out for CS, when in fact they are doing well in relation to their classmates. Think of the classic case where a female student gets a B and thinks she is terrible at CS, while a male student is pulling a C and still maintains his enthusiasm and drive.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-07-16T21:57:52.023Z
2017-07-16T21:57:52.023Z
nova
<p>30% is really troubling. Not to say that it's your fault, or the students', but there is some sort of impedance mismatch going on. In some learning communities you have the challenges of hard material and a student body that is not prepped for success and is easily discouraged. I see this a lot in bodies that have to (eg) hold down a job to survive or are the first in their family to go the school. There's something akin to survivors guilt going on I sometimes feel. Anyway, try looking into different more collaborative models like pairing everyone up with a study buddy and offering collaboration based problem sets instead of lone student homework challenges. Good luck! </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-25T17:57:32.660Z
Thanks for the answer. So, do you have some collaborative material you could share with us? Also, I didn't understand your instance on sharing past grades with new students, could you please clarify?
Ramon Melo
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-24T01:57:10.283Z
2017-06-24T01:57:10.283Z
AlwaysLearning
<p>do students benefit from knowing most of them will likely fail the subject? </p>

<p>Let's see here. I do this with all my students. I explain with hard data (evaluation, the number of hours they spend studying, the quality of their assignments, the discipline they exhibit) that there is a good chance they might fail a given subject. </p>

<p>Most, will flat out refuse to believe me. I would say, 8 out of 10 would disagree strongly with me. However, 2 out of 10, will come back to me, schedule one on one sessions. They will work on where they are weakest, and then, these 2 actually clear the subjects they are weak in, while the remaining 8, will end up failing anyway, thereby proving my prediction about them.</p>

<p>Short answer, yes, as a educator, we must share them what we know about their chances of failing at a subject. They should know. </p>

<p>Should they be informed that there might be a high chance they won't advance past CS101?</p>

<p>As with the earlier answer, they should be informed. That way, at least those that are willing to rectify their learning style, can improve their chances of success.</p>

<p>the key thing, I spend a considerable amount of time collating data about the students, before telling them that they might fail. its not really required of my job description but I do it anyway. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-22T04:03:08.720Z
2017-08-22T04:03:08.720Z
Jay
<h1>Context</h1>

<p>The main consensus in most compsci programs I have been at is that a sizable amount of students is inherently unable to learn how to code. <a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/" rel="noreferrer">An old entry on Jeff Atwood's blog</a> summarizing the issue cites <a href="http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf" rel="noreferrer">this 2006 article by Saeed Dehnadi and Richard Bornat</a>, claiming:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Formal logical proofs, and therefore programs – formal logical proofs that particular computations
  are possible, expressed in a formal system called a programming language – are <em>utterly meaningless</em>.
  To write a computer program you have to come to terms with this, to accept that whatever you
  might want the program to mean, the machine will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to
  some meaningless conclusion. In the test the consistent group showed a pre-acceptance of this fact:
  they are capable of seeing mathematical calculation problems in terms of rules, and can follow those
  rules wheresoever they may lead. The inconsistent group, on the other hand, looks for meaning
  where it is not. The blank group knows that it is looking at meaninglessness, and refuses to deal
  with it.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>It even goes on as to propose some of the prospective students to be advised away from compsci courses:</p>

<blockquote>
  <h3>7 Conclusion</h3>
  
  <p>There is a test for programming aptitude, or at least for success in a first programming course. We
  have speculated on the reasons for its success, but in truth we don’t understand how it works any
  more than you do.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Today, I found a <a href="http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hump_retraction.pdf" rel="noreferrer">retraction from Richard Bonat</a>, claiming his conclusions were affected by his mental health issues:</p>

<blockquote>
  <h3>2 How it happened</h3>
  
  <p>Though it’s embarrassing, I feel it’s necessary to explain how and why I came to write “The camel has two
  humps” and its part-retraction in (Bornat et al., 2008). It’s in part a mental health story.</p>
  
  <p>In autumn 2005 I became clinically depressed. My physician put me on the then-standard treatment for
  depression, an SSRI. But she wasn’t aware that for some people an SSRI doesn’t gently treat depression,
  it puts them on the ceiling. I took the SSRI for three months, by which time I was grandiose, extremely
  self-righteous and very combative – myself turned up to one hundred and eleven. I did a number of very
  silly things whilst on the SSRI and some more in the immediate aftermath, amongst them writing “The
  camel has two humps”. I’m fairly sure that I believed, at the time, that there were people who couldn’t learn
  to program and that Dehnadi had proved it. The paper doesn’t exactly make that claim, but it comes pretty
  close. Perhaps I wanted to believe it because it would explain why I’d so often failed to teach them. It was
  an absurd claim because I didn’t have the extraordinary evidence needed to support it. I no longer believe
  it’s true.</p>
</blockquote>

<h1>Question</h1>

<p>I've been a TA for compsci courses in three colleges and, in all of them, <em>transparency</em> was a core value: past exams, classes, and <strong>grades</strong> were made available from the very beginning. Failure rates were never lower than 30%, often beating failure rates for subjects widely regarded as more difficult, such as physics or calculus. </p>

<p>On the one hand, some students might feel discouraged to put in the effort to learn knowing that they have a high likelihood of failing. On the other hand, it might be beneficial for them to know hiccups are expected and perhaps compsci might not be the way for them.</p>

<p>My questions are: do students benefit from knowing most of them will likely fail the subject? Should they be informed that there might be a high chance they won't advance past CS101?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-23T15:07:00.043Z
Hi Ramon! Welcome to CSE! This is a great first question.
thesecretmaster
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-25T17:27:30.863Z
@thesecretmaster Thanks! I must confess I've committed just so I could discuss this question, it's been haunting me for quite a while.
Ramon Melo
<best-practice><student-motivation>
Can sharing learning stats be beneficial to guide beginner students?
# Can sharing learning stats be beneficial to guide beginner students?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-06-23)

# Context

The main consensus in most compsci programs I have been at is that a sizable amount of students is inherently unable to learn how to code. [An old entry on Jeff Atwood's blog](https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/) summarizing the issue cites [this 2006 article by Saeed Dehnadi and Richard Bornat](http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf), claiming:

> Formal logical proofs, and therefore programs – formal logical proofs that particular computations
> are possible, expressed in a formal system called a programming language – are *utterly meaningless*.
> To write a computer program you have to come to terms with this, to accept that whatever you
> might want the program to mean, the machine will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to
> some meaningless conclusion. In the test the consistent group showed a pre-acceptance of this fact:
> they are capable of seeing mathematical calculation problems in terms of rules, and can follow those
> rules wheresoever they may lead. The inconsistent group, on the other hand, looks for meaning
> where it is not. The blank group knows that it is looking at meaninglessness, and refuses to deal
> with it.

It even goes on as to propose some of the prospective students to be advised away from compsci courses:

> ### 7 Conclusion
>
> There is a test for programming aptitude, or at least for success in a first programming course. We
> have speculated on the reasons for its success, but in truth we don’t understand how it works any
> more than you do.

Today, I found a [retraction from Richard Bonat](http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hump_retraction.pdf), claiming his conclusions were affected by his mental health issues:

> ### 2 How it happened
>
> Though it’s embarrassing, I feel it’s necessary to explain how and why I came to write “The camel has two
> humps” and its part-retraction in (Bornat et al., 2008). It’s in part a mental health story.
>
> In autumn 2005 I became clinically depressed. My physician put me on the then-standard treatment for
> depression, an SSRI. But she wasn’t aware that for some people an SSRI doesn’t gently treat depression,
> it puts them on the ceiling. I took the SSRI for three months, by which time I was grandiose, extremely
> self-righteous and very combative – myself turned up to one hundred and eleven. I did a number of very
> silly things whilst on the SSRI and some more in the immediate aftermath, amongst them writing “The
> camel has two humps”. I’m fairly sure that I believed, at the time, that there were people who couldn’t learn
> to program and that Dehnadi had proved it. The paper doesn’t exactly make that claim, but it comes pretty
> close. Perhaps I wanted to believe it because it would explain why I’d so often failed to teach them. It was
> an absurd claim because I didn’t have the extraordinary evidence needed to support it. I no longer believe
> it’s true.

# Question

I've been a TA for compsci courses in three colleges and, in all of them, *transparency* was a core value: past exams, classes, and **grades** were made available from the very beginning. Failure rates were never lower than 30%, often beating failure rates for subjects widely regarded as more difficult, such as physics or calculus.

On the one hand, some students might feel discouraged to put in the effort to learn knowing that they have a high likelihood of failing. On the other hand, it might be beneficial for them to know hiccups are expected and perhaps compsci might not be the way for them.

My questions are: do students benefit from knowing most of them will likely fail the subject? Should they be informed that there might be a high chance they won't advance past CS101?

**Tags:** best-practice, student-motivation

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Hi Ramon! Welcome to CSE! This is a great first question.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 Thanks! I must confess I've committed just so I could discuss this question, it's been haunting me for quite a while.  

---

## 4 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2017-06-23. Score: 5

We had a question recently that also touched on some of these [same issues](https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/756/do-you-see-the-bimodal-distribution-too).

I am a fan of expressing that the material can be difficult, as it sets the tone and prepares students to work hard in a course. However, if failure rates are as high as you suggest, then that suggests something is going seriously wrong.

For context, I teach at a high school where kids apply during 8th grade into 4-year majors. They are tested in math and literacy, and we interview them to see if they are generally engaged kids. We do not evaluate them on programming or CS background, because most of the 8th graders have none.

If accepted, they cannot change their major at any point. That means that our CS kids will have a 4 year CS curriculum that builds upon itself, and it gives us teachers a very powerful motivation not to lose kids at the beginning. It simply isn't a viable option. A freshman who gets lost will probably remain lost for their next 3 years in the school.

Not every kid remains enthusiastic about CS. That's okay! They applied to the school when they were quite young, and many move on to other interests. However, over the last 3 years, we have had exactly one student not pass the AP test as a sophomore, and that student was dealing with significant mental health challenges that also brought about high absenteeism.

Now, a university program is not under the same constraints, and not every student at every institution can be classified as "gifted" (whatever that actually means), so I can absolutely accept that our results might be an outlier.

However, virtually everybody *can* learn to code. It comes down to what work the student puts in, and how well the instructor breaks down the concepts and designs the course materials.

My general advice to achieve high passing rates is to create good supporting materials to use with kids who struggle, and to break things down (and make connections explicit) far beyond what you would think you would need to. I know that that advice is quite vague!

And if you are ever unsure about how to break down an idea really clearly, ask around. *(Heck, I could tell you about this one website devoted completely to getting answers to the problems of CS educators ... ;-)* But please don't accept a 30% failure rate as the norm, or even as acceptable. So much more is possible!

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks for the answer, it's been a very insightful read. I got sad at the "please don't accept a 30% failure rate as the norm, or even as acceptable" part, though, because that was the absolutely very best we've managed to do. College is free here and students often leave our program in the middle of the term to prospect other fields.  
> **username_2**: Take what I say with a grain of salt, then, because I am in such a different context. If the consequences of failure are not catastrophic, then perhaps that 30% is much more reasonable. Do kids leaving mid-range to prospect elsewhere count as failures?  
> **username_0**: Yes, they do, but failing and leaving are often correlated. Students who pass CS101 and CS201 will hardly leave, and, when they do, they'll pick a major where their credits can be used, such as math or stats. Reading the 2006 article had sort of brought me a bit of peace of mind (after all, _not everyone could learn, so it was out of our reach anyway_), but the retraction made me worry our mindset might be a lot more pernicious than I had previously expected.  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2017-07-16. Score: 4

I'm so glad you found the retraction. I am often surprised at how far that (non-peer reviewed) paper has spread, and how few people know about its retraction. I imagine you've also seen the more recent [work calling bimodal distributions in CS grades into question](https://computinged.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/where-cs-teachers-see-bimodality-guest-blog-post-from-elizabeth-patitsas/).

On the topic of motivation, I found the relevant chapter in [How Learning Works](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0470484101) to be very useful (search "Thermodynamics" in "Look Inside"). There is a case study of a professor faced with a similar dilemma about sharing poor past grades, and then a breakdown of the various factors that influence students' motivation. In short, a supportive environment, student self-efficacy, and student value in learning the material are all needed in order to produce motivation. Making students feel that they may fail even if they put in effort will almost certainly lead to a lack of motivation, leading to poor learning. Luckily, it's possible to address all three factors in the classroom. Personally, my tool of choice has been active, collaborative learning activities like Peer-Led Team Learning and Peer Instruction---always from high-quality sources.

I believe NCWIT at one point recommended that professors make the overall grade distributions public *during* the course, so that students could have a realistic view of where they stand. This is for students who may think they are not cut out for CS, when in fact they are doing well in relation to their classmates. Think of the classic case where a female student gets a B and thinks she is terrible at CS, while a male student is pulling a C and still maintains his enthusiasm and drive.


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2017-06-24. Score: 4

30% is really troubling. Not to say that it's your fault, or the students', but there is some sort of impedance mismatch going on. In some learning communities you have the challenges of hard material and a student body that is not prepped for success and is easily discouraged. I see this a lot in bodies that have to (eg) hold down a job to survive or are the first in their family to go the school. There's something akin to survivors guilt going on I sometimes feel. Anyway, try looking into different more collaborative models like pairing everyone up with a study buddy and offering collaboration based problem sets instead of lone student homework challenges. Good luck!

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks for the answer. So, do you have some collaborative material you could share with us? Also, I didn't understand your instance on sharing past grades with new students, could you please clarify?  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2017-08-22. Score: 2

do students benefit from knowing most of them will likely fail the subject?

Let's see here. I do this with all my students. I explain with hard data (evaluation, the number of hours they spend studying, the quality of their assignments, the discipline they exhibit) that there is a good chance they might fail a given subject.

Most, will flat out refuse to believe me. I would say, 8 out of 10 would disagree strongly with me. However, 2 out of 10, will come back to me, schedule one on one sessions. They will work on where they are weakest, and then, these 2 actually clear the subjects they are weak in, while the remaining 8, will end up failing anyway, thereby proving my prediction about them.

Short answer, yes, as a educator, we must share them what we know about their chances of failing at a subject. They should know.

Should they be informed that there might be a high chance they won't advance past CS101?

As with the earlier answer, they should be informed. That way, at least those that are willing to rectify their learning style, can improve their chances of success.

the key thing, I spend a considerable amount of time collating data about the students, before telling them that they might fail. its not really required of my job description but I do it anyway.


---

