WIP - The relationship between engineering students' self-efficacy beliefs and their experience learning computer programming: A sequential explanatory mixed-methods investigation

摘要

Many engineering curricula require a computer programming course for first-year students. An introductory programming course teaches many concepts that may be difficult for students to learn. Students' responses to conceptual difficulties are influenced by their self-efficacy beliefs, that is, by their appraisal of their ability to learn these concepts successfully. Students with higher self-efficacy beliefs are likely to persist in overcoming these difficulties to succeed in the course, and vice versa. As a result of interacting with difficult concepts, students' self-efficacy beliefs are also liable to change and evolve during the course. Changes in students' self-efficacy beliefs may impact their decision to select a certain engineering major or even persistence in the engineering. For instance, if taking a programming course decreases a student's self-efficacy beliefs, then that student may be demotivated enough to drop out of engineering.