Factors affecting the success of non-majors in learning to program

The introductory programming course is difficult for many university students, especially students who have little prior exposure to programming. Many factors affecting student success have been identified, but there is still a dearth of knowledge about how key factors combine to affect course outcomes. In this study we develop and empirically test a model integrating three factors of importance in learning to program: previous programming experience, perceived self-efficacy, and knowledge organization. The participants were non-majors. The findings showed that perceived self-efficacy increased significantly during a semester course. Previous experience affected perceived self-efficacy but not knowledge organization. Both perceived self-efficacy and knowledge organization had an effect on the course grade, as well as on success in a specific programming task, debugging. The results on self-efficacy also suggested that the participants were overconfident about their programming capabilities. The contribution of this paper is the identification of the joint effects of an important set of factors for programming success by non-majors.