Seat Assignment Contribution to Student Performance in an Information Technology Classroom

This work seeks to improve the performance of low-performing students in an information technology classroom through a novel seating assignment methodology. In this study, students at the United States Military Academy were assigned seats in strategic locations within their classroom so as to improve their interaction with their instructor and their peers. Seating is determined by an order-of-merit list (OML) established by ranking students in accordance with their GPA, SAT-Math score, and programming experience. By strategically arranging these students, the authors seek to provide low-performance students with greater opportunities to obtain assistance and improve their performance in the course. Initial results indicate that strategic seating offers improved teacher- student interaction with a marginal improvement to the overall course performance of low-performing students.