The Academic Enhancement Program: Assessing Programs Designed to Support Student Success

The Academic Enhancement Program (AEP) aims to help students succeed in their post-secondary studies by incorporating learning strategies and academic reflection activities into core first-year Computing Science (CS). Initially offered in a single CS course at our institution, the AEP has since been run as a required component in several CS courses. It has also been adapted collaboratively in other universities, and is customizable to other disciplines with plans to expand into other departments. We have regularly evaluated AEP based on students', academic advisors' and instructors' perceptions to support the continual improvement of the program. The current study relied on both students' self-perception and course performance data in two sections of the same course, with the same instructor, contents, and exams, where only students in one section participated in the program. Employing linear regression, this study sought to determine what non-trivial factors account for student success, measured by final exam scores. We determined that 22% of the variance in student success measured by final exam scores can be accounted for by basis of admission, admission GPA, number of credits registered in, and a newly defined construct embodying student CS programming background experience. While our model did not include AEP as a predictive factor, we are encouraged that 77% of AEP participants said that they would continue to use study skills learned in AEP in future courses. Implications for further investigation of learning support programs are discussed.