The Influence of Motivation and Comfort-Level on Learning to Program

This paper documents a study, carried out in the academic year 2004- 2005, on the role of motivation and comfort-level in a first year object-oriented programming module. The study found that intrinsic motivation had a strong cor- relation with programming performance as did self-efficacy for learning and per- formance, r=0.512, p < 0.01 and r=0.567, p < 0.01 respectively. Aspects of comfort level were found to have significant correlations with performance with an instrument on programming-esteem rendering the most interesting results. A regression model based upon these factors was able to account for 60% of the variance in programming performance results.

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