Enhancing STEM Retention and Graduation Rate by Incorporating Innovative Teaching Strategies in Selected STEM Introductory Courses

Gate-keeping courses provide students with their first and formal exposure to a deep understanding of science. Such courses influence students' decision to pursue STEM education and continue their college experience. Our records indicate that the many STEM students perform poorly or marginally in the introductory required courses and decide to change their major to non-STEM degree programs. One way to address this is using active learning techniques. The objective of this paper is to describe our experiences with the use of few of the active learning techniques in introductory computer programming courses offered in our Computer Science Program. One of these programming courses are required of all computer science majors and other course is usually taken by engineering, technology and science majors. The findings presented in this paper may be used by interested parties involved in STEM curriculum.