The Difference Between Attitudinal Factors Influencing Success of Commerce and Computer Science Students at a South African University

Abstract

Software is a vital resource for modern life. For software to be successful, programming skills are of the utmost importance. These skills are used both by programmers and also by systems analysts and designers during the phases of software development. Therefore, both technical and non-technical stakeholders within the software development process need to understand programming. Evidence from the researchers’ experience indicates that non-technical stakeholders perform poorly in programming courses. Given the lack of literature on the attitude factors influencing programming success by non-technical students, this study set out to determine the attitudinal factors influencing successful programming by non-technical (Commerce) and technical (Computer Science) students at a South African University. Using a descriptive survey design, a 50-question Likert scale survey was completed by 126 Commerce and Computer Science students in the Information Technology discipline. Both Commerce and Computer Science students demonstrated a positive attitude towards realising the usefulness of computer programming, however Computer Science students demonstrated a higher overall positive attitude. Furthermore, for Commerce students, performance was correlated with these factors: confidence in learning programming, usefulness of programming and effectance motivation in programming. Hence it is recommended that strategies be devised by lecturers and programming course designers to increase student confidence and effectance motivation in programming, which will result in better student performance. Introducing a problem-solving approach and pair-programming, developing targeted courses and an early use of visual programming environments have been suggested to improve the overall confidence of non-technical students.