Computational environment to promote learning motivation of distance education introductory programming students

Initial programming education is a topic that continues to spark much debate, as it is an academic field with a notably high rate of student dropouts and failures. The challenge of offering this subject through distance education adds to the complexity, given the need for students to adapt to this mode of teaching and learning, which significantly differs from traditional classroom settings. Multiple studies suggest that students must appropriately develop cognitive and non-cognitive skills for effective learning. Yet, there is a pressing need for further investigation into the impact of non-cognitive skills on student performance, with a particular focus on motivation, which plays an important role in student success. In this sense, considering the specificities of learning programming, the context of distance education, this research aims to understand the factors that can stimulate students' motivation for initial learning of programming, developing a virtual learning environment that promotes student motivation to learn to program and evaluate the environment to identify whether its features have the potential to stimulate student motivation.