Cover Image

Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming

Having computer programming skills are crucial for engineers. Thus, computer programming has been made a compulsory course for all engineering students. However, computer programming has the reputation of being demotivating and is viewed as not interesting by most engineering students. Consequently,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Azmi, Nor Azlinda
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
TP Chemical technology
Online Access:http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/102013/1/NorAzlindaAzmiMSChE2019.pdf.pdf
http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/102013/
http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:149072
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
id my.utm.102013
record_format eprints
spelling my.utm.1020132023-07-31T06:59:19Z http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/102013/ Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming Azmi, Nor Azlinda TP Chemical technology Having computer programming skills are crucial for engineers. Thus, computer programming has been made a compulsory course for all engineering students. However, computer programming has the reputation of being demotivating and is viewed as not interesting by most engineering students. Consequently, this hampered their learning. Therefore, there is a need to find ways to motivate the engineering students to learn computer programming through appropriate pedagogical approaches that meet students’ motivational needs. This study aims to explore the influence of contextual factors of the learning environment towards engineering students’ motivation in learning computer programming. The studied elements were the contextual factors relating to the learning environment, the students’ motivational beliefs and the students’ behaviours. This naturalistic inquiry research was adopted to gather the data through non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews. The observations were conducted over a period of 14-weeks in three classrooms taught by different lecturers of the introductory computer programming course for first-year engineering students. Eighty-seven students participated in a survey using the Motivated Strategy Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) which later was used to identify the 10 selected interview respondents. The observation and interview data were recorded and transcribed for analysis using thematic analysis technique. The analysis discovered eight contextual factors and motivational beliefs that influence them to study computer programming and they are “Students’ Characteristics”, “Teaching Method”, “Lecturer’s Characteristics”, “Assessment”, “Task Driven Motivation”, “Peer Driven Motivation”, “Involvement” and “Persistent Behaviour”. The findings conclude that there are two significant pedagogical approaches that can help to increase engineering students’ motivation in learning computer programming namely collaborative learning environment and formative assessment. 2019 Thesis NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/102013/1/NorAzlindaAzmiMSChE2019.pdf.pdf Azmi, Nor Azlinda (2019) Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming. Masters thesis, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:149072
institution Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
building UTM Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
content_source UTM Institutional Repository
url_provider http://eprints.utm.my/
language English
topic TP Chemical technology
spellingShingle TP Chemical technology
Azmi, Nor Azlinda
Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
description Having computer programming skills are crucial for engineers. Thus, computer programming has been made a compulsory course for all engineering students. However, computer programming has the reputation of being demotivating and is viewed as not interesting by most engineering students. Consequently, this hampered their learning. Therefore, there is a need to find ways to motivate the engineering students to learn computer programming through appropriate pedagogical approaches that meet students’ motivational needs. This study aims to explore the influence of contextual factors of the learning environment towards engineering students’ motivation in learning computer programming. The studied elements were the contextual factors relating to the learning environment, the students’ motivational beliefs and the students’ behaviours. This naturalistic inquiry research was adopted to gather the data through non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews. The observations were conducted over a period of 14-weeks in three classrooms taught by different lecturers of the introductory computer programming course for first-year engineering students. Eighty-seven students participated in a survey using the Motivated Strategy Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) which later was used to identify the 10 selected interview respondents. The observation and interview data were recorded and transcribed for analysis using thematic analysis technique. The analysis discovered eight contextual factors and motivational beliefs that influence them to study computer programming and they are “Students’ Characteristics”, “Teaching Method”, “Lecturer’s Characteristics”, “Assessment”, “Task Driven Motivation”, “Peer Driven Motivation”, “Involvement” and “Persistent Behaviour”. The findings conclude that there are two significant pedagogical approaches that can help to increase engineering students’ motivation in learning computer programming namely collaborative learning environment and formative assessment.
format Thesis
author Azmi, Nor Azlinda
author_facet Azmi, Nor Azlinda
author_sort Azmi, Nor Azlinda
title Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
title_short Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
title_full Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
title_fullStr Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
title_full_unstemmed Contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
title_sort contextual factors influencing engineering students' motivation in learning computer programming
publishDate 2019
url http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/102013/1/NorAzlindaAzmiMSChE2019.pdf.pdf
http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/102013/
http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:149072
_version_ 1773543492124934144
score 13.211869

Similar Items